Make Believe

by Joanna Scott

  Maybe the attorneys were the ones to blame. Their interpolations, their third degrees, their siftings and calculations, their dissections and disputes and discord spun out of nothing so that they could bill their clients two hundred dollars an hour and drive away, whether they won or lost, it hardly mattered, in their black Mercedes. And what about the judge? Why had he permitted this matter to come to a head in his courtroom? So he’d have something to keep him busy. A respectable man must keep himself busy. The busier you are, the more you have your ear glued to your cell phone and your calendar filled with appointments, the more respectable you seem — a deception designed to give meaning to empty lives.

  The problem, in plain words, was a crisis of faith. Americans had lost their faith and struggled to find something, anything — ambition, hatred, licentiousness — to replace it. As Eddie sat on the bench in front of the federal building, he considered this crisis as an explanation for his own panic. Not that his faith ever wavered. But his deep ability to sympathize with others made him feel what they were afraid of feeling — panic in the absence of God.

  He felt calmer at this thought, his panic subdued by understanding. He pried open the tab on his Pepsi can and sipped. A school bus pulled up to the curb in front of him. The children stared out the windows at Eddie and Eddie stared at them. They were city kids, seven- and eight-year-olds, doomed children who would one day be standing before a judge in this same federal building pleading not guilty to charges of theft, prostitution, drug possession, or worse. Eddie watched as the doors opened and the youngsters bounced down the steps of the bus and followed their teacher into the temple of justice, the city’s own temple that might as well have housed the altar of Baal. Turning his face to the sun to soak up the last heat of summer, Eddie daydreamed of Gideon, himself as Gideon marching up those stairs, tearing down the altar with his bare hands, and building an altar to the Lord, laying the stones in due order. He would give the children back their faith. He would save them — in his idle dreams, not in reality, for Eddie Gantz was a quiet man who attended to his own affairs and didn’t interfere in public matters. He would continue to mind his own business, take care of his wife, serve, when called, as a fair and impartial juror in a court of law, and pay his bills on schedule.

  The afternoon session would begin in twenty minutes. Eddie decided to take a short walk. He didn’t much like the noise and smells of the city street, but he liked the feel of concrete beneath his shoes and the solidity of the buildings rising around him. He liked the visible, weighty evidence of hard work. Someday this city would lie in ruins, destroyed by years and years of neglect, but the ruins would tell of noble effort.

  Neglect, Eddie would tell you, can be costly. Neglect can add up to eleven thousand five hundred and fifty-two dollars. He couldn’t forget that number: eleven thousand five hundred and fifty-two dollars, which would have come out of his pocket if the medical establishment had had its way. Eleven thousand five hundred and fifty-two dollars.

  That so?

  On Monday evening, after his first long day of jury duty, he’d been eating supper and thinking about the trial while Marge prattled on. She’d returned to the subject of Jenny’s accident, a subject Eddie preferred to avoid but which Marge kept bringing up out of the blue. Why had Jenny gone off the road? Why had Jenny been driving so fast? Why had Jenny been drinking? Marge was trying — and failing so far — to develop a paranoid plot to account for her daughter’s death. Months had passed and so should have the paranoia, Eddie felt, but he couldn’t dissuade his wife with logic and chose to stay silent while she spun unlikely fictions that even she didn’t believe: Jenny had been run off the road by drug dealers; Jenny had been trying to escape; Jenny’s death wasn’t accidental, no, there were others involved, a stalker, perhaps, or gang members out for revenge — all false possibilities, Marge admitted, yet oddly comforting to consider.

  But Monday night she wasn’t talking about the cause of Jenny’s death. She was talking, Eddie eventually realized, about an extraordinary hospital bill that had come in the mail. The bill had been sent to various wrong addresses, apparently, and had gone back to the hospital a number of times until someone finally figured out the Gantzes’ correct address and had sent the bill certified.

  “And you signed for it?” Eddie asked.

  “What else could I do?”

  “You could have refused.”

  “But I didn’t know what it was. The postman told me to sign, so I signed.”

  A bill for eleven thousand five hundred and fifty-two dollars, with overdue highlighted in red. Eleven thousand five hundred and fifty-two dollars out of Eddie’s pocket to pay for the care of a child he had never met? Jennifer Templin’s illegitimate child?

  Marge had promised to make phone calls Tuesday while Eddie was in court. On Tuesday evening she reported that Jenny had carried no insurance and hadn’t been eligible for Medicaid. She’d spoken with child protective services, with various people in the hospital, and finally with the Gilberts, who had custody of Bo and would be the obvious “source for reimbursement,” as the woman in patient accounts had put it.

  As it turned out, the matter was swiftly resolved when Erma Gilbert agreed to cover the medical costs. No question about it, Mrs. Gilbert declared, the bill was their own responsibility, though she couldn’t help adding that in a better world the money would have gone in the opposite direction, from the hospital to Bo, compensation, as she described it, for all the mistakes the doctors had made — coming in late with the diagnosis, letting the child go into shock, then subjecting him to surgery, major surgery that should have been avoided.

  That so?

  Marge couldn’t recount the precise details from the conversation with Mrs. Gilbert. But she did know that the child, Jenny’s child, had suffered needlessly. He shouldn’t have suffered. Jenny shouldn’t have died. Marge wouldn’t rest until she identified the person to blame for what had happened. But she needed rest, and Eddie had helped her to rest. He’d stood behind her chair and massaged her shoulders, only half listening by then, luring Marge from her despair with sympathy expressed through the strength of his fingers. And he had succeeded eventually, drew the sorrow out of her and felt the muscles in her meaty arms relax into gratitude.

  That was last night. Eddie had left this morning before Marge woke. He’d picked half a dozen black-eyed Susans from the garden and arranged them in a vase on the kitchen table for her to find when she came down for her breakfast. There was no pleasure keener to Eddie than the pleasure of giving comfort. He was sure he’d have felt this even if he hadn’t been a Christian, for he knew in his bones, knew it without ever being told, or at least without remembering the lesson, that the gift of sympathy was its own reward.

  He’d been walking for seven minutes, so he turned around and headed back. The light changed just before he reached the intersection of Main and South; as he waited for the traffic to pass he thought about the strength of virtue. He was a virtuous man, a strong man, a comfort to those in need. He saw himself in the policeman mounted on the hefty bay horse clip-clopping along the street. He saw himself in the stern, solid bricks of the office buildings. He saw himself in the sidewalk and in the laws governing the people. Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering. Prove me, O Lord, and try me; test my heart and my mind.

  The immediate test would be the decision he’d have to make about the liability of the defendant in courtroom 4A. But that would be an easy test. Eddie wanted a more difficult test, a test that would prove the strength of his faith, a test like, oh, say something like … like a bill for over eleven thousand dollars to cover the medical expenses of a child he’d never met. That would be a challenge, cer tainly. He had been reluctant to pay the bill not because he couldn’t afford to but because he wasn’t responsible for the child. Yet what if the bill had been a test of his compassion? How would he know? Prove me, O Lord, and try me. If the bill had been a test, he’d fail
ed it. The scope of his compassion did not exceed his greed. Had he committed a sin by declining to fork out eleven thousand five hundred and fifty-two hard-earned dollars for the care of a child who did not belong to him?

  He continued walking along the last couple of blocks toward the federal building. He lifted the sleeve of his jacket to glance at his wristwatch. With the napkin he wiped the film of sweat from his forehead.

  The child is not responsible for the sins of the parents. The child is not responsible. The child is not responsible.

  He ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth. He brushed his palm against the side of his head. He felt the constriction of his full bladder and hurried up the steps of the building two at a time.

  Prove me, O Lord, and try me. Eleven thousand five hundred and fifty-two dollars. A series of mistakes. Extravagant care. Why did Marge sign for the letter? Overdue! Why did Jenny drive off the road? Why did she have relations with a black man? What color is the child? The court would be in session in six minutes. As for me, I walk in my integrity. My foot stands on level ground. Clip-clop clip-clop. Sturdy resoled shoes. The child is not responsible. The child is not responsible. The child is not responsible.

  There was right and wrong, white and black, day and night, and Eddie knew the difference. He would always choose right when offered a choice, even at the cost of eleven thousand five hundred and fifty-two dollars. Marge and Eddie had done right by redirecting the bill to the appropriate party, in this case the Gilberts. The boy belonged to the Gilberts now, who were being tested by this sudden expense to demonstrate the depths of their faith.

  In the men’s room he turned on the faucet, tested the temperature of the tap water with his index finger, and jammed the palm of his other hand against the box above the sink to force out the last remnant of liquid soap. He scrubbed rapidly to build up sufficient lather and watched as the tap water flattened the soap bubbles against the back of his hands. Soap and water. He’d spent most of his adult life counseling consumers on soap and water, demonstrating with his plastic models the elegance of rotor blades and the perfection of worm gears in order to convince people to buy their washing machines and dishwashers at Worthco rather than at some other appliance store. Prices were higher at Worthco, but so was the quality. And you couldn’t beat the store’s service contract. Eddie had stayed on at Worthco all these years because he believed in its ability to honor its promises. He was a man of infallible honor, whatever the circumstances. He’d lived a steady, quiet life, and though he’d had his fair share of suffering and had lost his first wife to cancer when she was just thirty-eight years old, he wasn’t one to complain.

  The woman in courtroom 4A hoped to make a bundle of money by complaining. On the witness stand she’d complained about the pain in her neck radiating down her left arm, the pain in her head, the pain in her upper back and lower back and sometimes in her hip joint and even in her left buttock and leg — all because a businessman in an Infiniti had bumped into her Ford Escort in a traffic jam.

  Eddie watched the warm tap water spill out of the bowl of his palms, form a transparent cylinder, then splash against the dirty white enamel. He liked to notice things and over time had learned to slow down fast-moving images simply by looking carefully at them, as though his mind somehow controlled external motion, as though the world were a film he could manipulate by pressing a button or turning a dial. The drops from the water scattered, splashed against the sides of the sink, and slid toward the drain.

  He turned off the tap and shook his hands. As he dried them with a brown paper towel he examined his reflection in the mirror and let his mind drift slowly through a chain of associations that would eventually bring him back to the thought he’d been thinking when he entered the men’s room — from the fact of his white skin to black skin, to the fact of Jenny Templin’s stupidity and the consequences of her errors, to the fact of her innocent child. An expensive child, as things had turned out. He wondered if the Gilberts had the means to pay for Bo’s medical expenses. He wondered if they’d contest the bill, seeing as how, according to Erma Gilbert, the doctors had made so many mistakes. If the trial about to conclude in courtroom 4A was any indication, all accusations no matter how outrageous were valid and deserved to be heard before a judge and jury.

  Eddie examined his mouth to make certain that none of his lunch remained stuck between his teeth, then he returned to the courtroom, where the parties of the plaintiff and the defendant had already taken their seats. He walked slowly down the aisle toward the rear door and the deliberation room, feeling the eyes of strangers on him, feeling privately the scope of his power, a juror’s power to rule for or against the accused. It occurred to Eddie that every person present in that courtroom wanted to know what he was thinking. They’d find out soon enough, but for the time being it gave him more than the usual pleasure to keep his thoughts to himself. He was not a wealthy man; he did not hold an official position; he had no title. He held strong opinions, but he had no illusions about the importance of his opinions and accepted the fact that no one but his wife, his few friends, and the more courteous shoppers at his store cared to hear what he thought.

  The people in the courtroom were far from indifferent. As Eddie walked past the defendant’s table he imagined the attorney, a sharp young blonde, slipping a bride of five hundred dollars into his pocket. He imagined refusing it. And as he crossed the area in front of the plaintiff he felt an almost physical sensation as she peered through squinting eyes at him. His thoughts mattered. They had never mattered this much to anyone. Seven other jurors had listened along with Eddie to the testimony, and their individual opinions would have immense consequence. This was a sacred democratic power, a power bestowed upon ordinary citizens to separate truth from lies.

  Intoxicating power. Eddie could keep his eyes focused on the door ahead and think whatever he pleased. Liar! he could think without glancing at the plaintiff. Nigger bitch! he could think if he were debased. I’m gonna kill you all! he could think if he were inclined toward violence. He could think terrible and terrifying thoughts that everyone would want desperately to know.

  The thrill would be over too soon — this was his thought as he stepped past the bailiff and through the doorway to join the other jurors waiting in the back room.

  He drove home through the soft blue light of the September dusk. He kept the driver’s-side window cracked to let in the warm evening air and cued in the local country music station on the car stereo. For no apparent reason he felt an indistinct dream from the previous night press close to his consciousness, though not so close that he could remember any details beyond a lingering sensation of defeat. He directed his mind back toward the day’s work and felt instead the sharp pleasure of pride.

  The jury had delivered their verdict against the plaintiff, a fair verdict — they’d saved an innocent man from fifty thousand dollars’ worth of damages. That they’d done the right thing was as clear as the sky with the evening star already visible in the fading light. Fifty thousand dollars the defendant did not have to pay thanks to Eddie Gantz and his fellow jurors.

  How satisfying it was to act on behalf of an innocent man, to do right, to pronounce judgment against a false accusation. Eddie had passed today’s test of character, undoubtedly. But what about the other test, the eleven-thousand-five-hundred-and-fifty-two-dollar test?

  He kept his eyes locked on the stretch of highway ahead and in his peripheral vision watched the land fall away as though off a sharp precipice. He considered the possibility of a malpractice suit as if it were an algebraic equation. He isolated the factors, identified the unknowns, imagined possible scenarios, and calculated a final sum. How much had the child suffered? How much was he worth? Marge’s daughter Jenny had proven herself a fool, but her child hadn’t proven anything yet and could very well prove himself deserving if given the chance.

  The horizontal light of the setting sun caused the shadow of the truck in the right lane ahead of Eddie to stretch ou
t like spilled tar across the highway. In the left lane a sleek red sports car sped past. Eddie drove a black Ford Bronco with tinted windows. He preferred to travel in the middle lane between seventy and seventy-five miles per hour, fast enough but not so fast that a state trooper would come after him. He shoved in the cigarette lighter to heat it, a habit he continued though he’d stopped smoking over a year ago after he developed some arrhythmia. When the lighter popped out he left it in place.

  Thank you, members of the jury, for your time and effort. You are dismissed.

  Eddie hadn’t elected to receive the meager financial compensation offered to jurors for their time. Instead, his compensation was the knowledge that he’d helped to secure justice for an innocent man. On the highway between the city and the exit for Route 62 south he decided to do the same for Jenny Templin’s child, the child he’d never met. Now Eddie wanted to meet him, to guide him, to help him find justice for whatever neglect he had suffered at the hands of people who lacked compassion as well as the insight to recognize their lack. Eddie wanted to treat the poor child to his compassion. This was a service he could perform in the name of God, an act of devotion, evidence to be submitted on his behalf in the highest court of all. Eleven thousand five hundred and fifty-two dollars. His heart, he once had calculated, beat on average thirty-one million five hundred and thirty-six thousand times in a single year. Eleven thousand five hundred and fifty-two dollars was nothing in comparison. He’d agree to a settlement that fell somewhere in between.

  The judge would want to know why Eddie and Marge had taken no interest in the child until that point. Because, he’d explain, the situation being what it was, with Jenny blaming her family for her misfortune and teaching her son to despise anyone who had anything to do with Marge and Eddie Gantz, they had no choice but to leave Jenny alone. It broke Marge’s heart, but that’s the way it had to be as long as Jenny held on to her resentment. The situation being what it was, with Jenny loosening up to every young man who looked her way, no one could say for sure who had fathered the child, or that’s what Marge had admitted to Eddie one Christmas Eve when she was swelled with wine and spite because Jenny had refused her holiday attempt at reconciliation.