Lucky

by Alice Sebold

We went over the preliminary and some affidavits dating back to the night of the rape. She told me that the police had already testified.

  “Clapper got up there and talked about knowing Gregory from around the neighborhood, indicating he had former knowledge of him. If Madison takes the stand, Billy will try to go after that.”

  Here my father was paying close attention.

  “So his record could be used?” he asked.

  “Nothing juvenile,” she said. “That’s not admissible. But we’ll make an attempt to establish that Greg is no stranger to the police. If he trips up and mentions it himself, then we can ask.”

  I described the outfit my mother and I had bought. Gail approved. “A skirt is important,” she said.“I don’t go anywhere near a courtroom in slacks. Gorman is particular on this point. Billy once got thrown out of his courtroom for wearing madras plaid!” Gail stood up. “I have to get this one home,” she said, indicating her stomach. “Be direct,” she said to me. “Be clear, and if you’re confused, look over at that prosecution table. I’ll be sitting right there.”

  That night was one of the worst in my memory for physical pain. I had begun, during the year, to have migraine headaches, although I didn’t know they were migraines at the time. I had hid the fact I’d had them from my parents. I remember standing in the hotel bathroom and realizing I was going to have one that night. I could feel the drum beating in the back of my head as I brushed my teeth and dressed for bed. Over the rush of the water I heard my father calling my mother to report on Gail. Having met her, he was flooded with relief.

  But that night, as my headache grew worse, my father became frantic. I felt the pain most acutely in my eyes. I couldn’t open or close them. I was sweating intensely and alternated between sitting bent over on the edge of one of the beds, rocking my head in my hands, and pacing back and forth between the balcony window and the bed.

  My father hovered. He fired questions at me. “What is it? Where is the pain? Should I get a doctor? Maybe we should call your mother.”

  I didn’t want to talk, because it hurt. “My eyes, my eyes,” I moaned. “I can’t see, they hurt so much, Dad.”

  My father decided that I needed to cry.

  “Cry,” he said. “Cry.”

  I begged him to leave me alone. But he was convinced he’d found the key.

  “Cry,” he said. “You need to cry. Cry.”

  “That’s not it, Dad.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said. “You are refusing to cry and you need to. Now cry!”

  “You just can’t will me to cry,” I said to him. “Crying doesn’t win a trial!”

  I went to the bathroom to throw up, and closed the door against him.

  Eventually, out in the other room, he fell asleep. I stayed in the bathroom with the lights on and then off, trying to soothe or shock my eyes back to their normal state. In the early-morning hours I sat on the edge of the bed as the headache began to lift. I read the Bible from the drawer beside my bed as a way to test that I hadn’t begun to go blind.

  The nausea hung on. Gail met us in the hotel cafe at eight. John Murphy arrived and sat with my father. Gail and Murphy tag-teamed me. I drank coffee and picked at the scales of a croissant.

  “Whatever you do,” Murphy said, “don’t look him in the eyes. Am I right, Gail?”

  I sensed she didn’t want to get this aggressive this fast.

  “He’ll look at you real mean, try and throw you off,” Murphy said. “When they ask you to point him out, stare in the direction of the table.”

  “Agreed,” Gail said.

  “Will you be there?” I asked Murphy.

  “Your father and I will be sitting in the gallery,” he said. “Right, Bud?”

  It was time to drive to the Onondaga courthouse. Gail went in her own car. We would see her there. Murphy, my father, and I went in the official county car.

  Inside the building, Murphy led us toward the courtroom, but stopped us midway down.

  “We’ll wait here until we’re called,” he said. “You okay, Bud?”

  “Fine, thank you,” my father said.

  “Alice?”

  “As good as I can be,” I said, but I was thinking of only one thing. “Where is he?”

  “That’s why I stopped you here,” Murphy confided. “To avoid any run-ins.”

  Gail came out of the courtroom and advanced toward us.

  “Here’s Gail,” Murphy said.

  “We’ve got a closed courtroom.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It means Paquette is trying to do what he did in the lineup. He’s closing the courtroom so you can’t have family sit in.”

  “I don’t understand,” my father said.

  “He wouldn’t let Tricia stay in the lineup,” I said to my dad. “I hate him,” I said. “He’s a slimy asshole.”

  Murphy smiled.

  “How can he do that?” my father asked.

  “The defendant has the right to request a courtroom be closed if he thinks it will rob the witness of support,” Gail said. “Look on the bright side, Gregory’s father is here too. By closing the court, he won’t have his father there either.”

  “How could he support a rapist anyway?”

  “It’s his son,” Murphy said quietly.

  Gail walked back to the courtroom.

  “It might be easier for you without your father there,” Murphy offered. “Some of what you’ll have to say is harder in front of family.”

  I wanted to ask why, but I knew what he was saying. No father wanted to hear the story of how a stranger shoved his whole hand up his daughter’s vagina.

  Detective Murphy and my father stood facing me. Murphy offered words of condolence to my father. He pointed to a bench nearby, saying they could wait right there the whole time. My father had brought a small, leather-bound book along.

  In the distance I saw Gregory Madison walking toward the courtroom. He had come from the hallway perpendicular to the one where I stood. I looked at him for a second. He did not see me. He was moving slowly. He wore a light gray suit. Paquette and another white man were with him.

  I waited a second and then interrupted my father and Detective Murphy.

  “Do you want to see him?” I asked my dad. I grabbed his arm to make him turn. “There he is, Dad.”

  But it was just Madison’s back now, entering the courtroom, a flash of gray polyester suit.

  “He’s smaller than I thought,” my father said.

  There was a beat. A silence. Murphy rushed in.

  “But wide. Believe me, he’s all muscle.”

  “Did you see his shoulders?” I asked my dad. I’m sure my father had imagined Madison as towering.

  Then I saw another man. He had a softer version of his son’s build, white hair around the temples. He hesitated, for a moment, near the courtroom door, then spotted our little group down the hall. I didn’t point him out to my father. Murphy’s earlier comment had made me see him differently. After a second, and a look at me, he disappeared back down the other hall. He must have realized who I was. I didn’t see him again, but I remembered him. Gregory Madison had a father. It was a simple fact but it stayed with me. Two fathers, both of them helpless to control their children’s lives, would sit out the trial in their separate hallways.

  The courtroom door opened. A bailiff stood in the open doorway and made eye contact with Murphy.

  “You’re up, Alice,” Murphy said. “Remember, don’t look at him. He’ll be sitting at the defense table. When you turn around, look for Bill Mastine.”

  The bailiff came to get me. He looked like a cross between a theater usher and someone in the military. Detective Murphy and he nodded to each other. The pass-off

  I reached for my father’s hand.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  I turned. I was glad for Murphy. I thought suddenly that if my father were to go to the men’s room, he might bump into Mr. Madison. Murphy would keep this from happening. I
let it come now, the thing that had been burning at the corners of my temples the night before and boiled beneath the surface all that year: rage.

  I was frightened and shaking when I crossed the courtroom, passed the defense table, the judge at the podium, the prosecution table, and came to take the stand. I liked to think I was Madison’s worst nightmare, although he didn’t know it yet. I represented an eighteen-year-old virgin coed. I was dressed in red, white, and blue.

  A female bailiff, middle-aged and wearing wire-framed glasses, assisted me up onto the stand. I turned around. Gail was seated at the prosecution table. Mastine was standing. I was aware of other people, but I didn’t look at them.

  The bailiff held a Bible in front of me.

  “Place your hand on the Bible,” she said. And I repeated what I had seen on TV a hundred times.

  “I swear to tell the truth … so help me, God.”

  “Be seated,” the judge said.

  My mother had always taught us to be scrupulous when wearing a skirt by smoothing it out before sitting down. I did this and as I did, I thought of what lay beneath the skirt and slip, still visible, if I lifted up the hem, through the flesh-tone stockings. That morning, while I dressed, I had written a note to myself on my skin. “You will die” was inked into my legs in dark blue ballpoint. And I didn’t mean me.

  Mastine began. He asked me my name and address. Where I was from. I barely remember answering him. I was getting the lay of the land. I knew exactly where Madison sat, but I didn’t look at him. Paquette cleared his throat, rustled papers. Mastine asked me where I went to school. What year I had just finished there. He took a moment to close the window, first asking permission of Judge Gorman. Then he led me back in time. Where was I living in May of 1981? He directed my attention to the events of May 7, 1981, and the early hours of May 8, 1981.

  I went into minute detail and, this time, did as Gail had told me to; I took each question slowly.

  “Did he say anything to you by way of a threatening nature while you were screaming, and while the struggle was taking place?”

  “He said he would kill me if I didn’t do what he said.”

  Paquette stood. “I am sorry. I can’t hear.”

  I repeated myself: “He said that he would kill me if I did not do what he said.”

  A few minutes later, I began to stumble. Mastine had led me up and now into the amphitheater tunnel.

  “What happened there?”

  “He told me to—that he was—well, I figured out by that time that he was—didn’t want my money.”

  It was a shaky start to the most important story I would ever tell. I began a sentence only to trail off and begin again. And this wasn’t because I was unaware of exactly what had happened in the tunnel. It was saying the words out loud, knowing it was how I said them that could win or lose the case.

  “… Then he made me lie down on the ground and he took his pants off and left his sweatshirt on, and he started fondling my breasts and kissing them and doing things like that, and he was very interested in the fact that I was a virgin. He kept asking me about it. So he used his hands in my vagina….”

  I was breathing shallowly now. The bailiff beside me became more and more alert.

  Mastine did not want the fact of my virginity to go by unnoted.

  “Stop for a second,” he said. “Had you ever had sexual intercourse with anyone at that time of your life?”

  I felt shame. “No,” I said, “I had not.”

  “Continue,” said Mastine, stepping back again.

  I talked uninterrupted for nearly five minutes. I described the assault, the blow job, talked about how cold I was, detailed the robbery of $8 from my back pocket, his kiss good-bye, his apology. Our parting. “… and he said, Hey, girl.’ I turned around. He said, ‘What is your name?’ I said ‘Alice.’”

  Mastine needed specifics. He asked about penetration. He asked how many times it had occurred if more than once.

  “It would be ten times because—or something to that effect, because he kept putting it in there, and then it kept falling out. So that is ‘in there,’ right? I am sorry. That is entering, right?”

  My innocence seemed to embarrass them. Mastine, the judge, the bailiff beside me.

  “So in any event, he did have penetration?”

  “Yes.”

  Next, more questions on lighting. Then the photo exhibits. Photos of the scene.

  “Did you receive any injuries as a result of this attack?”

  I detailed these injuries.

  “Were you bleeding when you left the scene?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “I am showing you the photographs marked for identification thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Look at those, please.”

  He handed me the photos. I looked only briefly at them.

  “Are you familiar with the person depicted in those photographs?”

  “Yes, I am,” I said. I placed them on the edge of the stand, away from me.

  “Who is tha—?”

  “Me,” I interrupted him. I began to cry. By trying not to, I made it worse. I sputtered.

  “Are those photographs true and accurate portrayals of how you appeared after the attack on the evening of May eighth, 1981?”

  “I was uglier, yes, but they are true portrayals.” The bailiff went to hand me a glass of water. I reached for it but my grasp wasn’t sure and it fell.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to the bailiff, crying more now. I tried to dab at her wet lapels with a Kleenex from the box she held.

  “You’re doing fine; breathe,” this steely bailiff said. This made me think of the emergency room nurse on the night of the rape. “Good, you got a piece of him.” I was lucky; people were pulling for me.

  “Do you want to continue?” the judge asked me. “We can take a short break.”

  “I will continue.” I cleared my throat and wiped my eyes. Now I held a Kleenex balled up in my lap—something I had not wanted to be reduced to.

  “Can you tell us what clothing you were wearing that evening?”

  “I was wearing a pair of jeans and a blue work shirt and an oxford type of shirt and a cable-knit cardigan sweater that was tan, and moccasins and underwear.”

  Mastine had been standing near the prosecution table. Now he stepped forward holding a clear plastic bag.

  “I am showing you a large bag which is marked exhibit number eighteen. Would you take a look at the contents of that bag and tell us if you are familiar with them?”

  He held the bag in front of me. I had not seen these clothes since the night of the rape. My mother’s sweater, shirt, and jeans that I had borrowed that afternoon were tightly packed inside. I took the bag from him and held it to one side.

  “Yes.”

  “What are the contents of that bag?”

  “They look to be the shirt and jeans and sweater that I had on. I don’t see the underwear but—”

  “How about where your left hand is?”

  I moved my hand. I had borrowed a pair of my mother’s underwear. She wore nude, I wore white. This underwear was stained so thoroughly with blood that only one clean patch reminded me of this.

  “Okay. My underwear,” I said.

  They were received into evidence.

  Mastine finished up on the events of that day. He established that I had returned to Pennsylvania after failing to pick a photo out of the mug books at the Public Safety Building. We moved to the fall, noting my return day in September for the beginning of my sophomore year.

  “I direct your attention now to October fifth, 1981, the afternoon of that day. Do you recall the events of that day, that afternoon?”

  “I recall one particular event, yes.”

  “Is the person who attacked you in Thorden Park, is he in court here today?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  I did what I was warned not to. I focused my attention on Madison’s face. I stared at him. For a few seconds, I was unaware of Mastine or of Gail,
or of the courtroom.

  “Would you tell us where he is sitting and what he has on?” I heard Mastine say.

  Before I spoke, Madison looked down.

  “He is sitting next to the man with the brown tie and he has a gray three-piece suit on,” I said. I relished pointing out Paquette’s ugly brown tie and identifying Madison not by his skin color, as I was expected to do, but by his clothes.

  “Let the record reflect that the witness identified the defendant,” Mastine said.

  For the remainder of the direct examination, I did not take my eyes off Madison for more than a second or two. I wanted my life back.

  Mastine spent a long time on the events of October 5. I had to describe Madison on that day. What he looked like, what he said. Madison raised his head from the defense table only once. When he did, and saw that I was still looking at him, he turned away and to the city of Syracuse outside the window.

  Mastine questioned me in detail about what Officer Clapper looked like, where he was standing. Had I seen Madison approach him? From what direction? Where did I go? Who did I call? Why the time discrepancy between seeing him and calling the police? Oh, he pointed out, the discrepancy was because I had appeared at class to tell my teacher I couldn’t attend? Had naturally called my parents and told them what had happened? Had tried to wait for a friend to walk me home? All the things a good girl, he implied, might do after running into her rapist on the street.

  His purpose in all this was to make anything Paquette could go after in his cross moot. That was what made Clapper so important. If I had identified Clapper and he, in turn, had identified Madison, this made my case close to airtight. This was the key point of identification Mastine emphasized. What Mastine and Uebelhoer, what Paquette, Madison, and I all knew, was that the lineup was the weak link.

  I had thought long and hard about what I was going to say. This time around I would not pretend a command I did not have.

  Mastine had me detail my reasoning for ruling out the men I initially had. I took my time explaining the similarities between numbers four and five and how I hadn’t been sure at the time I marked the box but that I had chosen five because of the eye contact.

  “At the time that you indicated it was number five, were you in fact positive it was him?”