Plain Truth

by Jodie Picoult

  “How did this contribute to your understanding of Katie?”

  “Well,” Coop said, “in Katie’s mind, difference is equated with shame, rejection, and failure. For Katie, the fear of being shunned is even more deeply rooted. She saw it happen to her brother, in a very extreme case, and absolutely did not want that to happen to herself. She wanted to get married, to have children . . . but she’d always assumed it would happen the way it happened to everyone else in her world. Discovering she was pregnant with an English man’s child, and unwed-both glaringly against the Amish norm-well, it led right to being shunned, which was something her mind wasn’t equipped to handle.”

  I was hearing him speak of Katie, but thinking of myself. My hand crept inside the jacket of my suit, resting over my abdomen. “What do you mean by that?”

  “She had been brought up to believe that there was only one way to get from point A to point B,” he said. “That if her life didn’t march down that path or turn out as perfectly as she had expected, it was unacceptable.”

  Coop’s words wrapped so tightly around me that breathing became an effort. “It wasn’t her fault,” I managed.

  “No,” Coop said softly. “I’ve been trying to get her to see that for a while, now.”

  The room narrowed, people falling away and sounds receding. “It’s hard to change the way you’ve always thought about things.”

  “Yes, and that’s why she didn’t. Couldn’t. That pregnancy,” Coop murmured, “it turned her world upside down.”

  I swallowed. “What did she do?”

  “She pretended it didn’t matter, when it was the most important thing in the world. When it had the power to change her life.”

  “Maybe . . . she was just afraid of taking that first step.”

  A profound silence had blanketed the courtroom. I watched Coop’s lips part, I waited for him to absolve me.

  “Objection!” George said. “Is this a direct examination, or As the World Turns?”

  Shaken out of my reverie, I felt myself blush. “Sustained,” Judge Ledbetter said. “Ms. Hathaway, could you flip the channel back to The People’s Court?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Sorry.” I cleared my throat and deliberately turned away from Coop. “When Katie found out that she was pregnant, what did she do?”

  “Nothing. She shoved the idea out of her mind. She denied it. She procrastinated. You know how it is when you’re a kid, and you close your eyes and think you’re invisible? Well, the same principle was at work. If she didn’t say out loud, ‘I’m pregnant’-she wasn’t. Ultimately, if she admitted to herself that she was pregnant, she would have to admit it to her church, too-confess publicly to her sins and be shunned for a brief time, after which she’d be forgiven.”

  “Ignoring her pregnancy-that sounds like a deliberate decision.”

  “It’s not, because she really didn’t have a choice. In her mind it was the only sure way to keep from being excluded from her community.”

  “She couldn’t hide it when she went into labor. What happened then?”

  “Quite obviously,” Coop said, “that denial mechanism broke down, and her mind scrambled for some other way to keep herself from admitting to the pregnancy. When I first met Katie, she told me that she felt sick at dinner, went to bed early, and remembered nothing until she woke up. Of course, the facts indicate that sometime during those hours, she had a baby.”

  “That was the new coping mechanism-a memory loss?”

  “A memory gap, due to dissociation.”

  “How do you know Katie wasn’t dissociating from the minute she found out she was pregnant?”

  “Because then she’d probably have multiple personality disorder. Anyone who fragments off her consciousness for that many months would develop another identity. However, it is possible to split off one’s consciousness to survive brief periods of trauma, and for Katie, that’s entirely consistent.” He hesitated. “It’s less important to understand which defense mechanism she used, and whether it was conscious or unconscious. For Katie, it’s more crucial to understand why she felt a need to protect herself from the knowledge of pregnancy and birth, period.”

  I nodded. “Did she eventually recall what happened during and after the birth?”

  “To a point,” Coop said. “She remembers being afraid to get blood on the sheets of her bed. She remembers going to the barn to give birth, and being incredibly afraid. She remembers cutting the cord and tying it off. She knows that she picked up the infant and cuddled him. Quieted him.” He held up his pinkie. “She remembers giving him her finger to suckle. She closed her eyes, because she was so tired, and when she woke up the infant was gone.”

  “Based on your knowledge of Katie, what do you think happened to that infant?”

  “Objection,” George said. “This calls for speculation.”

  “Your Honor, every witness the prosecutor put on speculated about this issue,” I pointed out. “As Katie’s psychiatrist, Dr. Cooper is far more qualified than anyone else to comment on this.”

  “Overruled, Mr. Callahan. Dr. Cooper, you may answer the question.”

  “I believe that the baby died in her arms, for whatever medical reasons premature infants die. Then she hid the body-not well, because she was acting like a robot at the time.”

  “What makes you believe this?”

  “Again, it goes back to being Amish. To bring an illegitimate baby into the Amish community is upsetting, but not ultimately tragic. Katie would have been shunned for a brief time, and then accepted back into the fold, because children are treasured by the Amish. Eventually, after the stress of birth, Katie would have had to face the fact that she’d borne an illegitimate child, but I believe she’d have been able to handle it once the baby was alive and there and real to her-she loved children, she loved the baby’s father, and she could have rationalized shunning on the grounds that something beautiful had come from her mistake.”

  Coop shrugged. “However, the baby died in her arms while she was passed out from exhaustion. She woke up, covered with blood from delivery and holding the dead newborn. In her mind, she blamed herself for the baby’s death: he had died because he wasn’t conceived in wedlock, within the Amish church.”

  “Let me get this straight, Doctor. You don’t believe Katie killed her baby?”

  “No, I don’t. Killing her own infant would have made it virtually impossible for Katie, in the long run, to be accepted back into the community. Although I’m no expert on pacifist societies, I think deliberately confessing to murder would most likely fall under that category. Since inclusion in the community was the foremost thought in her mind for the entire pregnancy, it was certainly with her at the moment of birth, as well. If she’d woken up to a live baby, I think she would have confessed to her sin in church, raised the baby with her parents, and gone on with her life. But as it was, that didn’t happen. I think that she woke up, saw the dead infant, and panicked-she was going to be shunned for an illegitimate birth, and she didn’t even have a child to sweeten that reproof. So her mind reflexively kicked into coping gear, and tried to remove the evidence that there had been either a birth or a death-in essence, so that there would be no reason to exclude her from her community.”

  “Did she know she was hiding the body at the time she was doing it?”

  “I assume Katie hid the baby’s body while she was still in a dissociative state, because to this day she doesn’t remember doing it. She can’t let herself remember, because it’s the only way she can live with her grief and her shame.”

  That was the point at which Coop and I had planned to cut off the direct examination. But suddenly, on a hunch, I crossed my arms. “Did she ever tell you what happened to the baby?”

  “No,” Coop said guardedly.

  “So this whole scenario-the baby’s death and Katie’s sleepwalking stint to hide the body-that’s something you came up with entirely on your own.”

  Coop blinked at me, confused, and with good reason.
“Well . . . not entirely. I based my conclusions on my conversations with Katie.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said dismissively. “But since she didn’t actually tell you what happened that night, isn’t it possible that Katie murdered her baby in cold blood, and stuck it in the tack room afterward?”

  I was leading, but I knew that George wouldn’t have objected if his life depended on it. Coop sputtered, utterly confused. “Possible is a very big word,” he said slowly. “If you’re talking about the feasibility of certain-”

  “Just answer the question, Dr. Cooper.”

  “Yes. It’s possible. But not probable.”

  “Is it possible that Katie gave birth, held her baby boy, swaddled her baby boy, and cried after discovering it had died in her arms?”

  “Yes,” Coop said. “Now, that’s probable.”

  “Is it possible that Katie fell asleep holding her live infant, and that a stranger came into the barn and smothered it, and hid it while she was unconscious?”

  “Sure, it’s possible. Unlikely, but possible.”

  “Can you say for certain that Katie did not kill her baby?”

  He hesitated. “No.”

  “Can you say for certain that Katie did kill her baby?”

  “No.”

  “Would it be fair to say that you have doubts about what happened that night?”

  “Yes. Don’t we all?”

  I smiled at him. “Nothing further.”

  • • •

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, Dr. Cooper, but the defendant never actually said that her baby died of natural causes, right?”

  Coop stared down the prosecutor, God bless him. “No, but she never said she murdered him either.”

  George considered this. “And yet, you seem to think that’s highly improbable.”

  “If you knew Katie, you would, too.”

  “By your own testimony, the foremost thought in Katie’s mind was acceptance by her community.”

  “Yes.”

  “A murderer would be shunned by the Amish community-maybe even forever?”

  “That’s my assumption.”

  “Well, then, if the defendant killed her baby, wouldn’t it make sense for her to hide the evidence of the murder so that she wouldn’t be excommunicated forever?”

  “Gosh, I used to do this in seventh-grade math. If x, then y. If not x, then not y.”

  “Dr. Cooper,” George pressed.

  “Well, I only brought it up because if the if part of that statement is false, the then part doesn’t work either. Which is just a roundabout way of saying that Katie really couldn’t have murdered her baby. That’s a conscious act, with conscious reactive actions-and she was in a dissociative state at that point.”

  “According to your theory, she dissociated when she gave birth-and was dissociating when she hid the body-but managed to be conscious and mentally present enough to understand that the baby had died of natural causes in the few minutes in between?”

  Coop’s face froze. “Well,” he said, recovering, “not quite. There’s a distinction between knowing what’s happening, and understanding it. It’s possible that she was dissociating during the entire sequence.”

  “If she was dissociating when she realized the baby had died in her arms, as you suggest, then she was not really aware of what was happening?”

  Coop nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Then why would she have felt such overwhelming grief and shame?”

  He had Coop up against a tree, and we all knew it. “Katie employed a variety of defense mechanisms to get through the birth. Any of these might have been at work at the moment she realized the infant had died.”

  “How convenient,” George commented.

  “Objection!” I called out.

  “Sustained.”

  “Doctor, you said that the first thing Katie recalled about the birth was that she didn’t want to get blood on the sheets, so she headed to the barn to give birth?”

  “Yes.”

  “She didn’t recall the baby itself.”

  “The baby came after the labor, Mr. Callahan.”

  The prosecutor smiled. “So my dad told me forty years ago. What I meant was that the defendant did not recall holding the baby, or bonding with it, isn’t that right?”

  “All that would happen after the birth. After the dissociation,” Coop said.

  “Well, then, it seems awfully callous to be worrying about your sheets when you’re apparently enraptured with the idea of having a child.”

  “She wasn’t enraptured at the time. She was terrified, and dissociating.”

  “So she wasn’t acting like herself?” George prodded.

  “Exactly.”

  “One might even say, then, that it was like the defendant’s body was there, giving birth, feeling pain, although her mind was elsewhere?”

  “Correct. You can function mechanically, even in a dissociative state.”

  George nodded. “Isn’t it possible that the part of Katie Fisher that was physically present and mechanically able to give birth and cut the cord might also have been physically present and mechanically able to kill the baby?”

  Coop was silent for a moment. “There are a number of possibilities.”

  “I’m gonna take that as a yes.” George started to walk back to the prosecution’s table. “Oh, one final question. How long have you known Ms. Hathaway?”

  I was on my feet before I even realized I had been rising. “Objection!” I yelled. “Relevance? Foundation?”

  Surely everyone could see how red my face had become. A hush had fallen over the courtroom. On the stand, Coop looked like he wanted to sink through the floor.

  Judge Ledbetter squinted at me. “Approach,” she said. “What does this have to do with anything, Mr. Callahan?”

  “I’d like to show that Ms. Hathaway has had a working relationship with this witness for many years.”

  Flattened on the polished surface of the judge’s bench, my palms were sweating. “We’ve never worked together in court before,” I said. “Mr. Callahan is trying to prejudice the jury simply by showing that Dr. Cooper and I know each other personally as well as professionally.”

  “Mr. Callahan?” the judge asked.

  “Your Honor, I believe there’s a conflict of interest here, and I want the jury to know it.”

  While the judge weighed our statements, I suddenly remembered the first time Katie had admitted to knowing the father of her baby. The moon had been full and white, pressed up against the window to eavesdrop; Katie’s voice had smoothed at the edges when she said Adam’s name out loud. And just ten minutes ago: This memory was the only thing I had left, and you gave it away.

  If George Callahan did this, he’d be robbing me.

  “All right,” the judge said. “I’ll allow you to proceed with your questioning.”

  I crossed back to the defense table and took my seat beside Katie. Almost immediately, her hand reached for my own and squeezed. “How long have you known the defense counsel?” George asked.

  “Twenty years,” Coop said.

  “Isn’t it true that you two have more than a professional relationship?”

  “We’ve been friends for a long time. I respect her immensely.”

  George’s gaze raked me from head to toe, and at that moment I had the profound urge to kick him in the teeth. “Friends?” he pushed. “Nothing more?”

  “It’s none of your business,” Coop said.

  The prosecutor shrugged. “That’s what Katie thought, too, and look where it got her.”

  “Objection!” I said, standing so quickly that I almost pulled Katie up too.

  “Sustained.”

  George smiled at me. “Withdrawn.”

  “Come on,” Coop said to me a little later, when he was released as a witness and the judge called for a coffee break. “You need a walk.”

  “I need to stay with Katie.”

  “Jacob will baby-sit, won’t you, Jacob?”
Coop asked, clapping Katie’s brother on the shoulder.

  “Sure,” Jacob said, straightening a little in his seat.

  “All right.” I followed Coop out of the courtroom, through a volley of quiet murmurs from the press reps who were still sitting in the gallery.

  As soon as we reached the lobby, a camera flash exploded in my face. “Is it true,” the accompanying reporter said, her face only inches from mine, “that-”

  “Can I just say something here?” Coop interrupted pleasantly. “Do you know how tall I am?”

  The reporter frowned. “Six-two, six-three?”

  “Just about. Do you know what I weigh?”

  “One ninety.”

  “Excellent guess. Do you know that I’m thinking really hard about taking that camera and throwing it on the ground?”

  The reporter smirked. “Guess you’re a bodyguard in every sense of the word.”

  I squeezed Coop’s arm and pulled him off into a hallway, where I found an empty conference room. Coop stared at the closed door, as if contemplating going back after the reporter. “It’s not worth the publicity,” I said.

  “But think about the psychological satisfaction.”

  I sank into a chair. “I can’t believe that no one’s tried to take a picture of Katie, but they came after me.”

  Coop smiled. “If they go after Katie, it makes them look bad-violating religious freedom and all that. But they still need something to run as a graphic with their stories. That leaves you and Callahan, and believe me, a camera’s gonna love you more than it loves him.” He hesitated. “You were fantastic in there.”

  Shrugging, I curled my toes out of my pumps. “You were awfully good yourself. The best witness we’ve had yet, I think-”

  “Well, thanks-”

  “-until George completely undermined your credibility.”

  Coop came to stand behind me. “Shit. He didn’t nullify the whole testimony with that crap, did he?”

  “Depends on how self-righteous the jury is, and how much they think we were taking them for a ride. Juries do not like to be fucked with.” I grimaced. “Of course, now they’ll think I’m screwing anyone I put on the stand.”