Invisible Boy

by Cornelia Read

  He’d reached the empty witness box so he spun on his heel to pace slowly back toward the gallery.

  “Both of them agree to testify against the men who battered their children to death, and yet only one of them gets charged alongside that man, only one of them is held responsible for his actions.”

  Hetzler stopped, midstride, and looked at the jurors.

  “Guess which one of those women was shown mercy by the State of New York, ladies and gentlemen.”

  He turned toward Bost, and glared.

  “Go ahead. Guess.”

  Galloway didn’t bother with Hetzler’s prolonged theatrics when she got to her feet. She jumped right in, bristling with indignation on her client’s behalf.

  “You’ve heard Angela Underhill’s version of her son’s death. You’ve heard the testimony of a woman who was both racked with the pain of cancer surgery and stupefied by powerful drugs. You’ve heard the words of a woman suffering from three generations of tragedy, desperate to save the life of her last remaining descendant.”

  Here she paused. “What you have not heard is the testimony of Albert Williams, in his own defense. And it’s important that I remind you, right now, that you cannot hold this against him. His having chosen not to take the stand is no admission of guilt, or of innocence. You were told this, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, at the outset of this trial. It is no less true now. The fact that Albert Williams has not taken the stand to speak to you directly cannot factor into your decision, at the culmination of this trial.

  “And now I’m finished with what you are not allowed to consider. Here is what you can—”

  She held up one finger. “First, consider that Angela Underhill has everything to gain by convincing you she had no hand in her son’s abuse, or in his death. We have only her word that the injuries inflicted on her son, Teddy, were inflicted by Albert Williams. She is the only so-called eyewitness produced by the prosecution, the only person who told you that she allegedly saw Williams beating her child. Can we take her words at face value, can we take them as the words of a disinterested party? No, we can’t.”

  Up went finger number two. “Second, we have the testimony of Stephanie Keller, the former emergency-room nurse. Ms. Keller never saw Albert Williams mistreating Teddy Underhill. She never saw him hit the child, she never saw him cause the boy even the slightest discomfort. And when Ms. Keller asked the boy’s mother how these injuries had occurred, what did Angela Underhill do? She ran from the building, and refused to speak with Keller further. What was the basis of Keller’s claim that Albert Williams had harmed Teddy Underhill? Disembodied voices in an air shaft, ladies and gentlemen, the vague echoes of voices she heard while under the influence of the most powerfully intoxicating, mind-altering drugs known to medical science. Nothing more than that.”

  Galloway lofted finger number three, a benediction.

  “Third, you heard the testimony of Mrs. Elsie Underhill—a widow, an upstanding member of this community—who raised her granddaughter following the murder of the girl’s mother, her own daughter. Think about that, ladies and gentlemen—think about what’s at stake for Mrs. Underhill, the powerful loyalties that must have informed her testimony. She’s lost her husband, lost her daughter, and lost her great-grandson. The only family member she has left in the world is Angela Underhill—and the unborn child Angela now carries.”

  Galloway gave her three-pronged hand a little bounce in the air. “ Think about that, ladies and gentlemen. Think about the tragedies suffered by Mrs. Elsie Underhill, and then ask yourself whether she could have brought herself to condemn the last living member of her own family—whether she could have taken that stand and told us the truth about who hurt little Teddy—when by so doing Mrs. Elsie Underhill would lose her granddaughter, Angela, on top of everything else she’s been made to endure.

  “Mr. Hetzler just urged you to consider the facts of the case, ladies and gentlemen,” she continued. “ The facts of the case.

  “Angela Underhill. Stephanie Keller. Mrs. Elsie Underhill”—she looked at her raised trio of fingers. “You’ve heard the testimony of these three so-called witnesses, ladies and gentlemen—”

  Galloway’s hand fell like a slingshot-struck songbird. “But they did not tell you even a single fact.”

  She shook her head.

  “My colleague Mr. Hetzler urged you to consider the facts of the case, but are there any facts in this case?” she asked. “Only one: Teddy Underhill is dead.”

  Galloway stepped closer to the jury box. “But we cannot know who killed him. We have no hard evidence—no facts—to consider, just the word of three women whose testimony is tainted by self-interest, by the ravages of disease, and by the unbearable burden of misplaced familial loyalty. The homicide investigation offers nothing else, the pathologist’s report offers nothing else—and yet Mr. Hetzler and Ms. Bost just stood up right here in this courtroom and told you to drop a noose of circumstantial evidence—of bushwah and hearsay—around the neck of Albert Williams, and they want you to pull that noose tight.

  “They want you to convict Albert Williams on the basis of a drug addict’s testimony. A woman so amoral, so inhuman, she was willing to sell her own child for crack money. A woman who lied and lied and lied, whenever it suited her purpose.”

  Galloway paused, chin high. “Don’t you let them get away with it.”

  61

  When Galloway returned to her seat at the defense table, the judge began his instructions to the jury.

  I didn’t catch his opening words because Cate leaned over and whispered, “Was Galloway actually trying to imply that this is some kind of lynching?” into my ear.

  I shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

  “To find the defendants guilty of murder in the second degree,” said the judge, “you must—”

  Cate interrupted with a whispered “What happened to first?”

  The bailiff glared in our general direction, but we weren’t the only source of noise competing for His Honor’s airtime. The crowd fairly brimmed with hisses and grumbles.

  “Order!” The judge smashed his gavel down.

  “I will clear this courtroom,” he said, “if those of you in the gallery do not immediately contain yourselves.”

  Chastened, we all shut right the hell up.

  His Honor started up again where he’d left off.

  Cate reached into her purse and pulled out a pen and a piece of paper.

  “With malice aforethought,” continued the judge, “which means that you must find—”

  Cate poked me in the knee and I looked down.

  She’d scrawled I still don’t get why they can’t charge them with murder in the first degree across the back of a crumpled receipt.

  I took the pen from her, writing First’s only for special circumstances. Like if you killed a cop, or more than one person.

  “To find either or both defendants guilty of manslaughter,” said the judge, “you must—”

  Cate grabbed the pen back out of my hand, scrawling How can the death of a child

  not be considered a special circumstance?

  I wrote I know!!!

  beneath that, as the judge started explaining that only Angela Underhill faced a charge of filing a false report with the police.

  The judge’s charge to the jury was over far more quickly than I thought it should have been, given the eight counts each against Albert and Angela. How could anyone drive the enormity of all that evil home in under ten minutes?

  The bailiff said, “All rise,” and Cate dropped her pen and receipt back into her purse before we got to our feet.

  I watched the judge leave, then the jury.

  The room filled with pent-up commentary in their absence.

  I looked at Cate. “What happens now?”

  “I guess we wait.”

  “Fuck that,” I said. “Let’s go pester Bost.”

  The prosecutor very kindly allowed us to tag along behind when she returned to he
r office.

  “I just want to dump my papers on my desk and make a phone call or two,” she said. “Then I’m taking off these damn heels and putting my feet up.”

  Bost waited while Cate and I signed the guest register and stuck name-badge stickers onto our lapels.

  “Is Kyle here?” I asked.

  Bost turned to the receptionist. “Have you seen him, Therese?”

  “Five minutes ago,” the woman replied. “Stick your head in his office on the way by.”

  Kyle looked up and nodded when we reached his doorway, pointing at the phone held to his ear before holding up a pinched thumb and forefinger to let us know he’d join us shortly.

  Bost nodded and continued down the hallway, Cate and I trailing in her wake.

  “So now we just wait for the jury?” asked Cate when we’d all kicked off our shoes in Bost’s office.

  “This is the tough part,” she replied. “Never gets any easier.”

  “Do you have any sense of what they’re going to decide?” I asked.

  Bost leaned back in her chair. “You never really know what a jury will do. That’s what makes it so tough.”

  “They can’t believe Galloway’s whole lynching speech, though,” said Cate, “can they? I mean, that was absolutely appalling.”

  “I have no idea whether she swayed anyone with that specific part of her closing,” answered Bost. “But she did a good job of pointing out the weaknesses in the state’s case against Williams.”

  “Was her implication that this is a lynching supposed to convince the African American jurors?” I asked.

  “Sure,” said Bost. “Or any of the jurors.”

  I felt awkward about my next question. “Okay, but, um… does it not occur to Galloway that she’s, like, white and you’re—”

  Bost laughed. “Not?” she said. “Galloway’s willing to pull anything out of her ass she can when it comes to slamming the honesty of the prosecution.”

  Kyle rapped the doorway with his knuckles. “Is someone calling Louise racist again?”

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “Honey,” said Kyle, “you should have heard all the church ladies rank on this poor woman during her last case.”

  “I was going after a young guy who’d shot a Korean storekeeper and his wife to death during a robbery,” said Bost.

  “Every time she walked down the hallway, outside the courtroom,” continued Kyle, “some righteously indignant bunch of grandmas would start the chorus up again.”

  “Just loudly enough for my ears,” said Bost. “ ‘Call herself a black woman, cutting down that flower of young African manhood the way she do.’ ”

  Cate’s eyes went wide. “That’s absolutely—”

  “ Fucked,” I finished for her.

  “Yeah,” said Bost. “Tell me about it.”

  “So who was it this time, Marty or Galloway?”

  “You have to ask?” said Bost.

  “Galloway. What a peach.” Kyle rolled his eyes.

  “ ‘Peach’ is not the first word that springs to mind,” I said.

  “I’m pretending to be professionally objective,” said Kyle. “Give me a break, here, Maddie.”

  “Break given,” I said.

  He looked at Bost. “How’d your closing go?”

  “Fingers crossed,” said Bost.

  “Knock wood,” added Cate, reaching toward Bost’s desk to do just that, “but I think Louise was magnificent.”

  “How long will this all take?” I asked. “The jury and everything?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen today,” said Kyle. “But I’m betting this one will take them a good long while.”

  “And how long is ‘a good long while,’ usually?” asked Cate.

  “I doubt they’ll come back before the weekend,” said Bost.

  Kyle consulted the ceiling, lips pursed. “My money’s on Wednesday morning.”

  “From your lips…” said Bost.

  “Longer is better?” asked Cate.

  “Longer means they’re really trying to do the right thing,” said Bost.

  “ Next Wednesday morning?” I asked.

  “You’ve got someplace better to be?” asked Kyle.

  “I just have this wedding coming up.”

  “Anyone I know?” asked Kyle.

  “My mother.”

  “ Mazel tov,” he said.

  62

  I was back at the Catalog the next morning. I didn’t know what else to do. The idea of waiting for the jury to come in at home in the apartment drove me crazy. All I could think about was the dead guy, and how much my arm itched inside the filthy cast.

  Yumiko picked up the phone around ten o’clock.

  “Some guy for you,” she said, punching the Hold button. “Kyle. Line Two.”

  I thought about what Bost had said yesterday, how the jury taking a long time meant they were serious.

  Not good.

  I picked up the receiver and pressed the blinking cube beneath it.

  “This can’t be good,” I said. “You told me Wednesday.”

  “It’s not the jury,” said Kyle.

  “You just called to say ‘I love you’?”

  “I just called to say Teddy’s mother went into labor last night.”

  I sucked in my breath.

  “A little girl, Maddie,” he said. “Six pounds.”

  I burst into tears.

  “Maddie?” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “Honey… I’m so sorry.”

  I sniffed. “I can’t stand it.”

  “I know.”

  “What happens now?”

  “With the jury?”

  “With everything,” I said.

  “I don’t know. They probably won’t wait for her.”

  “To recover?”

  “It was a C-section. I don’t know how long that takes.”

  “Me either,” I said.

  “They’ll give the verdict when they’re ready.”

  “What happens if she’s not there?”

  “Depends on what they decide. If they don’t convict her, it doesn’t matter.”

  “And if they do convict her?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never had this happen during a trial.”

  We were quiet for a minute.

  “A girl,” I said. “That’s just so horrible.”

  “I have to go. Louise will call you later, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Sure you’re okay?” he asked.

  “I’m alive,” I said. “It doesn’t get better than that, right?”

  “Sweetie. Just know I’m thinking about you, okay? Go home early. Call me if you need anything?”

  “I will,” I said. “Thank you.”

  I put down the phone, then looked out the window into the air shaft.

  It was snowing. Again.

  I turned in my chair to face Yumiko. “It’s just that trial thing.”

  “Out in Queens?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened? They let those fuckers go?”

  “Worse,” I said.

  “What’s worse than that?”

  “The mother had another baby. Last night.”

  “Wow,” she said. “That sucks.”

  “Yeah. It does.”

  Pagan walked in. “You have plans for lunch?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Hey,” she said, “are you crying?”

  “I think I’m done now. Maybe.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “The woman in that trial, she had a baby,” said Yumiko.

  Pagan gave me a pained smile of commiseration. “And I’ve just come to ruin your day even further.”

  “I’m not sure that’s possible,” I said.

  “We need to pick up our bridesmaid dresses from Laura Ashley,” said my sister, wincing.

  “Wow,” I said. “You were right.”


  “Who the fuck is Laura Ashley?” asked Yumiko.

  “Trust me,” Pagan told her, “you so do not want to know.”

  “Some white chick,” said Yumiko.

  “Pretty much the whitest chick who ever lived,” said Pagan.

  “And then some,” I said.

  “Better you than me, then.” Yumiko shivered.

  “Laura fucking Ashley,” said Pagan. “You believe this shit?”

  We were standing just inside the entrance of the aforementioned store’s Upper East Side location.

  Looking around the frothy, luxuriously fitted boutique, none of it quite seemed real. Even the sound of footsteps here was silenced by the thick, expensive carpeting.

  Are these my people? Do I even have a people?

  “I’m still struggling with the concept that we’ve been conscripted as bridesmaids for our own mother’s wedding,” Pagan said.

  “ Fourth wedding—”

  “And that the new stepsisters we have not yet met had the unmitigated chutzpah to pick out our fucking dresses.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you feel like we died and got relegated to tufted-chintz hell?” she asked. “Seriously. Maybe we got hit by a bus out on the sidewalk. Maybe this is our punishment for all of fucking eternity.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What are the chances Satan reeks of rose petals?”

  “I think they call it brimstone.”

  “Brimstone is sulphur. It smells like rotten eggs.”

  “How do you even fucking know shit like that?” she asked.

  “I spent three years in Syracuse,” I said. “Trust me, hell is Upstate. And it smells like rotten eggs.”

  “I’m getting this creepy feeling that someone wants to reincarnate me as an overstuffed love seat.”

  “Let’s just get it over with. Find a sales chick.”

  “How can you tell who works here and who’s just shopping?” she asked. “They’re all remote-controlled zombie-assassin Stepford-pod androids enslaved by the receiver units tucked inside those humongous plaid hairbows.”

  “Pagan, we can take these bitches. We’re still in the goddamn Social Register.”