Break and Enter

by Colin Harrison

  “You know,” he went on, wanting and yet not quite able to accept Janice’s sympathy, “I talk to witnesses and read the police file, work out the case and so on, and in a certain respect you understand what has happened.” Lives fell apart and behavioral patterns tended toward a situation which resulted in murder. “I mean, when was the last time you read about a murderer who had a happy childhood and progressed normally into full, healthy adulthood?”

  “You’re saying love, self-perception—”

  “Whatever that is.”

  “—whatever that is, by definition, limits destructive behavior,” Janice agreed.

  “Exactly. Right. It should. I read the file and see how it all was coming. You’ve told me a million times you see this with the men who beat their wives and children. You and I work the same vector of behavior, just at different stages.”

  “I know.” She shook her head.

  “Chance situations being repeated until the odds catch up,” he continued.

  “Those people scare me,” Janice said.

  He mumbled agreement and checked his watch, feeling the day’s pressure begin. Right now the gargoyles and maidens and rams and lions carved into the outside walls of City Hall were rolling their eyes in delight, waiting for the morning’s influx of lives and flesh and drama.

  “We’ve got a tremendous backlog of cases. And we keep losing judges.” He shook his head in disbelief, for he was genuinely amazed—even given the normal high level of corruption among city officials—at just how rotted out the system was. “You read about the three judges who resigned because of the payoffs from the roofers’ union?” He worried that she was bored or that he was bullying her with the tone of his voice, half-aware that the rhythm of their interaction was moving back toward conflict. “Enough of that agony. Why did you take the Ortho-junk?”

  “Do you need it?” Janice dodged this sudden lunge.

  “Yes, I brush my teeth with it. The Harvard Medical Journal recommends it. Can’t get pregnant from oral sex.”

  “I took it, Peter, okay?” When he didn’t say anything, she leaned back, pushed at her food. “It’s representative. Don’t pretend to be stupid.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “That’s not your business.”

  “Please tell me where you moved, Janice. I need to know.”

  She shook her head.

  “I need to know. A lot.”

  “The apartment was just an extension of us, Peter. I mean, you helped me find it, you helped me move—I needed a break.” She looked around the restaurant. “I have a place where I feel some space. For the first time since I can remember. My life is changing and it feels good. I need space from you, Peter. I feel like you’re going to come after me.”

  He thought of a childish response and said it. “I always came after you did.”

  “Get a grip.” Her eyes flashed at him. “What I really mean,” she said, her tone earnest again, still hoping he would hear her, “is that I need to feel separate for now, completely separate.”

  He glanced at the President’s smile in the artwork. The man had surfed into national office on a wave of toothless campaign promises and a shocking disregard for the truth. As Peter got older, each President seemed less mythic, more pathetic.

  “Any more separate you’ll be riding the space shuttle.”

  “Peter, stop.”

  They were silent for a minute. Janice had left much of her hot cereal uneaten. He finished his omelet, watched the other people in the restaurant, wondering if their private lives were equally upset.

  “Jesus, you’re being a bitch about this, Janice.”

  “That’s it, I’m leaving. Good-bye.”

  She rose to leave, lifting her bag from the floor.

  “I’m sorry, Janice. Please.”

  She slowly returned to her seat. He felt lucky. Usually such scenes required his chasing after her, and a truckload of retroactive admission of wrongdoing. But this time Janice did something unexpected. She took his hand and looked at him, pushing her lips together, eyes watering slightly.

  “You’re having a hard time, aren’t you?”

  This was the truest thing either one of them had said to each other yet that morning.

  “I know I’m acting like an ass … I know it.” He bowed his head in confession. “I can’t believe this is happening. I mean, we go back so far. I wander around the house …”

  Her eyes became unfocused, contemplating the conflicted mystery of things. It was the same look she got when she talked about her mother’s suicide when she was sixteen.

  “Please come back, Janice.” He regretted saying this.

  “I can’t, Peter.”

  “I love you, you know.” This he didn’t regret. “I’ll do anything for you.”

  “Yes, I know, but basically it’s irrelevant.” She was starting to cry, darting her eyes around and trying to blink it away, but her face got soft and screwy and she was crying.

  “Let me go, Peter.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Please just let me go.” Her voice was bitter now.

  “I did.”

  “No, you haven’t. You made me pull away. If you really love me, you’ll let me have the space. You’ll see me.”

  “I can’t talk to anybody else.”

  “You’re going to have to learn how.”

  They looked at each other, seeing only loss. And one of the things that was lost was her nakedness, which he craved. Lately when he thought of Janice naked, he could picture her neck and stomach and her modest pubic triangle, but he couldn’t picture her breasts as well as he would have liked. This was mysterious and disturbing to him; he loved her breasts. He could not remember exactly how large her nipples were, the size of a quarter or a half-dollar. A small, crucial fact had disappeared. It pained him to know that his visual record of Janice was fading, even a little, even as she sat before him poking at her grapefruit rind. And, too, he hated himself for the stupid distractions his mind now threw up like flak in order to avoid the devastating reality of the conversation. He could, for instance, picture Janice in a swimsuit or a bra or blouse but not naked. Stupidly, inexplicably, his wife’s breasts had always been important to him. He remembered the morning when he was about twenty-six and the moment he realized Janice’s breasts had just started to fall—seen the beginning of the inevitable move downward of those pert, buoyant globes to something a little closer to earth, each now-invisible nipple lower, farther down her chest by maybe a quarter of an inch. It had been in the early morning, the sun streaming horizontally into their bedroom as Janice came in from the shower. “What’re you looking at?” she’d said, seeing him stare at her from the bed. “Nothing,” he replied. “Nothing in particular. I like watching you dry yourself off.” She had smiled at this and came over to the bed, given him a toothpasty kiss, and sweetly called him a liar. He had always depended on her ability to know he was lying. It was one of the things that kept him honest.

  “Peter?”

  “You’ve always been much stronger than me, Janice,” he muttered distractedly.

  “I hate being strong.” Her gaze passed him, looked at other things. For Janice, life had been marred by more than the usual disappointments. Strength was brought about by occasions of loss. And Janice had lost plenty. She had found her mother in her parents’ bedroom, staring deadly at a never-finished letter to Janice’s father. Years ago, she had told Peter she wondered how someone could calmly read while bleeding profusely from arteries severed lengthwise in each wrist, which first had been placed on a white towel so as not to create a mess. Her father, a man with expansive depths of bitterness, had torn the letter up without reading it, perhaps in some evil way feeling tricked. These were things Janice had known intuitively at age sixteen, and yet were only articulated as she and Peter talked through the years. As Janice’s past cooled, they could dissect and understand it. Yet always, she had been set apart from him by it. Now he watched her eyes cloud in awaren
ess, telling the story of her own life to herself; this sad scene in the restaurant would become just one of many moments, past and future. The look on her face—the judgment of time—had always scared him.

  “Hey,” he began, wanting to bring her back to the present, over which he might have some control, “I’m sorry I hassled you—I’ve been an ass, Janice. A total ass.”

  She relaxed visibly; it wasn’t going to get worse. He checked his watch. He had to get to City Hall soon.

  “You don’t want me to call you, right?”

  “Not for a while. I’d appreciate it if you just didn’t.”

  “Right. What about the apartment?”

  “I’m not going back.”

  “Good-bye to security deposit,” he groaned.

  “Good-bye to security deposit,” she said, nodding.

  “Good-bye Columbus.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Chips.”

  She looked away sadly, her eyes drifting distractedly over the ebbing breakfast crowd.

  “Neither one of us is dealing with this very well.”

  “What about rent at the new place?”

  She did not answer him directly. “I still need money.”

  Peter didn’t want to see her beg. Her job didn’t pay enough to really live on. A woman helps other women, listening to the same problems week in and week out, gluing lives back together, wiping their kids’ noses, making sure there was food in the cabinet, and gets paid nothing. And scouts watching dropoff corners for crack gangs made five hundred dollars a day, tax free.

  “Here.” He pulled out his checkbook and ripped out ten checks. “Write whatever you need.”

  “This is a pretty messy way to do things.”

  “You still have your little bank machine card, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take the checks, and make a couple of deposits into your separate account,” he directed. “Make it as much as you need. Use the other checks for food or whatever, the divorce lawyer—”

  Janice looked up at him quickly.

  “Just a lucky paranoid guess.” He smiled as steadily as he could. “Put the money in your account and you can still use your card.”

  “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need it.”

  “I know.” This was true. “Car okay?”

  She nodded.

  He had tried to dilute his anger with affection; the result was righteous stoicism and made him think of one more thing.

  “I guess, then, I’ll need the other key.”

  Janice hadn’t been expecting this. But he had been returning from work to find pots missing, small plants, books, clothes, her favorite things. Items he loved. A jewelry box, her Patsy Cline tapes. This was intolerable, a kind of guerrilla warfare on his psyche. Her closet was emptier, the rooms of their house larger, full of new echoes. Getting the key forced Janice to call if she needed something from the house, and with her being coy about her whereabouts, he’d take whatever contact he could.

  She fumbled through her purse, found a key chain with about eight keys on it—front door of work, office, file cabinet, the Subaru, plus the key to the townhouse. He watched her twist the key off the chain. There were a couple he did not recognize, house or apartment keys. Janice handed him her copy of their house key and put the chain back in her bag.

  “Difficult,” she said softly, blinking and searching his face for tenderness. “Necessary but difficult.”

  “You gave the key back already, Janice.” He rose and put on his scarf. “This is just a formality.”

  Janice buttoned her coat, then dutifully squeezed his hand. He wanted to hold her fingers, so much smaller and finer than his. As she politely pulled her hand from his, he saw she had removed her engagement and wedding rings.

  “Good-bye, Peter.”

  She turned and left.

  OUTSIDE, PEOPLE RUSHED BY HIM, hunched over, hurrying toward jobs, conquests, conflicts, joys, and the grave—they were the unknowing blur, the smudge of movement, inside the great grid of stone. The city was so old, and in mysterious ways he was old with it, for the ancient Scattergoods had lived here, long before City Hall was an idea, no more than a deep pit in the bedrock where, oddly enough, a small deposit of gold was later found and plundered. He knew the city so well, felt its seasons, the drift of years.

  And now it was time to pump up today’s righteousness. Morgan had come to court that morning to do battle on this, his final day of presenting witnesses, and Peter could see in Morgan’s busy movements—the scribbling of notes, the constant whispered statements to the defendant—the rising energy of a man who has departed from rationality in the service of a ludicrous goal. Morgan had probably ingested too much coffee that morning, and Peter remembered Berger’s advice from the day before to get Morgan as agitated as possible.

  Now Morgan began with Mrs. McGuane, the Robinsons’ housekeeper, in his attempt to prove Billy Robinson’s innocence of the murder of Judy Warren. Mrs. McGuane was a fiftyish woman wearing glasses with heavy designer frames and a rosary around her proud, bullish neck.

  The opening questions established that Mrs. McGuane had been in the employment of Dr. and Mrs. Robinson since the late 1960s, serving all of that time as their housekeeper on the estate, that she had completed the ninth grade, and was once briefly married, long ago. These were easy factual questions, which Morgan lingered over in his attempt to have the jury know and like and trust her. The man’s job was to attack the facts, as presented by the prosecution. Yet he could not focus on the method by which the police had gathered the facts—the evidence, including yesterday’s confession—for that information had been ruled admissible in court. Instead, Morgan would attack the perception of the confession by carefully building the fabric of mundane details upon which to base an alibi. Mrs. McGuane was essential to this task, and Morgan’s toothy, predatory smile went on and off like a light as he worked Mrs. McGuane with the control of a puppeteer, nodding reassuringly as she sang out the predetermined answers, rephrasing a question slowly if she became flustered. Morgan was the kind of man who became more irrational the closer he came to large sums of money, and no doubt he viewed this case as entry into the Robinson vaults. Usually he was quite happy to slobber all over the reporters’ microphones outside a courtroom, but this time he had been strangely quiet. Such a change, which was another reason the media had ignored the case, could only be due to some explicit instructions from whichever faceless, high-powered firm oversaw Dr. Robinson’s affairs. No matter how little or ineptly the parents actually cared for their sons, they had their pride to maintain, and that was worth whatever fee Morgan might charge. If Morgan won this unwinnable case, many similar ones would come his way. The incentives to get witnesses to lie were enormous.

  The defendant—hair still slick from the shower—was particularly motionless and attentive as the housekeeper described herself. For though Robinson had not received a mother’s unquestioning love, he enjoyed the fierce, doglike loyalty of Mrs. McGuane, who, it became clear, was a well-intentioned yet limited woman who ran the household and knew more about the sons than anyone. She possessed the conviction of the wholly self-deceived and thus was a hostile witness, one whose testimony Peter had to tear apart.

  “… I heard Billy come in downstairs in the front—or rather, I should say I heard somebody—and so I walked out of my room and saw him over the balcony and talked with him a minute and that’s how I knew it was him,” she was saying, her voice loud and emotional. “I saw Billy and that’s how come I say he was home that night. He ain’t guilty of nothing, that’s why I’m here to tell it to you.”

  “Objection,” Peter said matter-of-factly. “Witness’s answer is not responsive to the question.”

  “Sustained.” Judge Scarletti nodded. “Please restrict your answers to the questions, Mrs. McGuane.”

  Mrs. McGuane had spent a lot of time putting on makeup that morning, and now, as she was unable to avoid crying, her mascara started to run, dripping over the foundation and
blush applied so heavily on her cheeks. Peter saw that the jury was buying it, the eight women understanding completely the humiliation of running mascara, thereby empathizing with her, and thereby more likely to believe her story. In fact, Peter thought angrily, nearly everyone was tortured by this bit of melodrama, and Mrs. McGuane, perhaps sensing her advantage, carefully refused to dab at the inky tear of mascara clinging to her cheek.

  She made a show of controlling herself and nestled into the witness chair to describe in her earnest, self-interrupting manner the evening in question. She explained the nature of the radio show she’d been listening to and how she remembered she was listening to it when Robinson came into the house. The time of the radio show fixed the time of his entrance, which of course was exactly the victim’s approximate time of death, as fixed by the city medical examiner, a time known to Morgan, who now entered into evidence the published programming format of the radio station. On it was listed the radio show Mrs. McGuane described. All this testimony was designed to dovetail with the statements made the previous afternoon by Robinson’s drinking pals. Mrs. McGuane, prompted by Morgan, even admitted that William Robinson might have driven home a little drunk—the strategy, of course, was to admit a bit of wrongdoing and thereby humanize the defendant, trade down on sins. Mrs. McGuane was doing her part well.

  And Judge Scarletti, seeing this, glanced at Peter. How are you going to counter this? his lifted eyebrow inquired. The judge, a prosecutor back in the days when the American public erroneously believed it had reached the zenith of cynicism, was a fair man with a good legal mind who nonetheless generally despised defense counsel for representing such scum of the earth and disliked prosecutors for their inevitable mistakes—thus, he was a man who had only predilections, not favorites.

  Morgan stood close to the witness stand throughout the examination, which was unusual behavior for a man who liked to pace around, lean on the jury rail, fuss with his notes, twist his gold pinkie ring, and dispel as much nervous energy as possible with such bad courtroom habits. No doubt Morgan had decided to slow his movements. The jury saw everything that courtroom lawyers did, their mumbling and shuffling, their herky-jerky karate chopping of the air to emphasize a point, their surreptitious scratching of testicles, their yawns jammed with a fist. As Morgan quizzed the housekeeper about meaningless things—how she’d put water in the dog’s bowl before going to bed—Peter wondered where Janice was right now. Helping or comforting someone besides him. That had been the pattern a long time now and he’d always been jealous, wanting so badly a few minutes’ worth of affection, guiltily hating the women in the shelter who got his wife’s best energies. The house key was just gratuitous knife-twisting and they both knew it, and she was too hurt or too good to make something out of it. He hated his pettiness. If she had walked into the courtroom and said, Peter, let’s get out of Philadelphia, just go somewhere, he might actually leave and never come back. She’d take off those beautiful black heels and place them side by side, toes touching, in her closet in the house. He’d find the highway maps in the third kitchen drawer, and they’d go camping in West Virginia, sing songs, and eat apples in the car.