A Summons to New Orleans (15 page)

Margaret approached her with some photographs, after she had shown them to the defense attorney. She said, “Ms. Gray, do you recognize these photographs?”

Simone took them and stared at them for a long time. Even from this distance, Nora could see a tear sliding down her face.

“Yes,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

“What are they?”

“Pictures of me at the hospital.”

“Are there any marks on you in the photos?”

“Yes. There are bruises around my neck and on my arms.”

Margaret took the photos back and handed them to the jury. Then she approached with a wadded-up piece of clothing.

“Do you recognize this?”

“Yes. It’s the dress I was wearing.”

“Do you notice anything unusual about it?”

“There is a blood stain here on the back. It looks as if someone has cut part of it away.”

Margaret took the dress away and handed it to a juror.

She stood in the middle of the room for a moment and then she said, “Ms. Gray, is the man who raped you in this courtroom today?”

“Yes,” Simone said.

“Can you identify him?”

Simone pointed at Quentin Johnson, her arm outstretched, her hand visibly trembling. “He is right there, in the white shirt and tie.”

Margaret nodded solemnly.

“No further questions, Your Honor,” Margaret said.

Bill Farrell asked permission, then stood. He went over the events of the evening again, taking out the map, going over the details.

Then, suddenly, he said, “Ms. Gray, are you married?”

“Objection, irrelevant,” Margaret said.

“Sustained.”

“All right. Were you alone during this visit?”

“I’ve said so, yes.”

“You danced with Mr. Johnson.”

“Yes.”

“And you asked him to walk you home.”

“He volunteered. I accepted.”

“Going back, you did use the men’s room at the club, Oz?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And why didn’t you use the women’s room?”

“It was locked.”

“Do you know why it was locked?”

“I presume because a woman was in there.”

Low-level titters from the jury box.

“Isn’t it true that you followed Mr. Johnson into the men’s bathroom and seduced him?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Isn’t it true you had consensual sex there in the bathroom?”

“No, I did not.”

“You stated that Mr. Johnson had vaginal and anal sex with you?”

“No,” Simone said. “I stated that he raped me vaginally and anally.”

“But you did say there was anal sex.”

“Yes, against my consent.”

“Are you aware that the doctor found no rectal tear?”

“Objection,” Margaret said. “Ms. Gray is not a medical expert.”

“Sustained.”

Mr. Farrell rolled his eyes and regrouped. Finally he said,

“According to your testimony, Mr. Johnson had sex with you against the wall of St. Louis Cathedral.”

“He raped me. In Pirates Alley. Whatever building is there.”

“It is St. Louis Cathedral. It is a church, is it not?”

“I have never been inside there. I can’t confirm that it is a church.”

Mr. Farrell looked down at his notes. While he was looking, Simone said, “He would know that better than I would. And if it is a church, that just makes it more disgusting.”

“Your Honor, I haven’t asked a question.”

“Please refrain from extraneous comment, Ms. Gray,” the judge said.

Mr. Farrell said, “Did you scream, Ms. Gray, during this alleged conflict?”

“I couldn’t, at first. He was choking me.”

“Later, when he took his hands away?”

“I was afraid to scream.”

“Why?”

“I feared for my life.”

“Did he have a gun?”

Simone hesitated, then said, “I don’t know.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you didn’t see one.”

“No.”

“You didn’t see a gun or a knife?”

Simone sighed and said, “I didn’t see a penis either, until he forced it into me.”

“Objection, Your Honor.”

“Ms. Gray, please refrain from elaborating.”

“As far as you were aware, he did not have a weapon.”

“I had no way of knowing if he had one.”

“But you did not see one.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Mr. Farrell nodded, then said, “You had several drinks that night?”

“No. I had two or three before the rape, and many after.”

“Were you drunk?”

“No, I wasn’t. Not during the rape, anyway.”

“Were you wearing a necklace that night?”

“Yes, I was wearing a sort of silver chain. It’s in the photograph.”

“And isn’t it true that the marks on your neck were a result of a rash, an irritation caused by the necklace?”

Simone stared at him, her face turning red with anger. “Mr. Farrell, I am not in the habit of going to the emergency room, waiting for four hours, submitting to a pelvic exam, getting a half a dozen shots and a prescription for the AIDS cocktail simply because I have a rash on my neck.”

Mr. Farrell looked at the judge. “I believe she has been admonished, Your Honor.”

Judge LaSalle shrugged and said, “Sounded like a good answer to me.”

Mr. Farrell stared at his notes a long time, then said, “So you write for a living?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You’re a journalist.”

“Yes.”

“And a journalist is always looking for a good story.”

Simone read him right away. She said, “It’s rare that a food review will include sexual assault or any other life-threatening event. Tends to put the public off.”

“Your Honor . . .”

“Mr. Farrell, it was a preposterous question. The people should have objected. I will let the record reflect her answer.”

Mr. Farrell remained still for a moment, then seemed to decide he should get out while he could. “No further questions,” he said.

Nora and Poppy shared a look. That sealed the case, Nora was thinking, and Poppy seemed to agree. Simone stepped down from the witness box, glancing briefly at them as she walked out.

The judge called for another recess. Nora, Adam and Poppy stood and, without speaking, went into the hallway. Instead of finding Simone collapsed and broken, she was pacing the hallway, smiling at them, wiping at her eyes with a Kleenex.

“How was it?” she asked.

“Great,” Nora said. “You did great.”

“I’m so sorry,” Adam repeated.

“Yeah,” Poppy said.

“God, I feel so exhausted. But I’m going for a walk,” she said. “Thanks for sticking it out.”

And then she walked away. Nora turned to Adam and Poppy. Poppy had a serious look on her face.

“She danced with him,” Poppy said. “And she asked him to walk her home.”

“What difference does it make?” Nora demanded.

“It’s just not what she told us.”

“Maybe she was embarrassed.”

“It’s just different. That’s all.”

It wasn’t long before a clerk came out and told them that the defense was about to put their witness on. They had only one witness—the defendant himself. They didn’t want to miss his testimony.

Quentin Johnson was nervous on the stand. He looked so slight and ineffectual in the witness box. It was hard to believe he had ever hurt anyone. He had a little boy’s face and a
slight body, made to look even more innocent by his white shirt and tie. He told a similar tale of how they met in the club, but after the part about the fast dance, his tale began to conflict with hers. He said that he wanted to go to the bathroom, and she followed him. He went inside the men’s bathroom, and while he was doing his business, she came inside the room, locked the door and said, “You’re a fine-looking man.” At which point she started to undress him, and they had sex there in the stall.

Later, they parted at the door of the club, on good terms. He didn’t see her again until she accused him of rape.

Margaret stood up for cross-examination.

“So, if she came into the bathroom, how did it happen? Did she start to kiss you?”

“No,” he said, as if the thought offended him.

“You started to kiss her?”

“No. Nobody kissed anybody.”

“Well, how did the sex act occur?”

“It just did,” he said.

“Did you take her panties down?”

“No.”

“Did she take them down?”

“No.”

“Then, I’m confused. How did it happen?”

“You tell me,” he said, throwing his head back in a gesture of defiance.

“No, Mr. Johnson, I am the attorney. You tell me.”

“Nobody pulled anybody’s panties down. I just moved them to the side.”

“And how did you have sex? From the front, from behind?”

“From behind. Her behind facing me.”

“So you had sex in the stall, without pulling her panties down, her back to you.”

“That’s right.”

“What happened when it was over?”

Quentin Johnson just looked at her. “Nothing, I guess.”

“Did you talk?”

“No, we just walked out. And then she went outside and went home.”

“So you want us to believe that this woman, who travels all over the world, who visits one strange city after another, taking care of herself, never encountering any violence . . . she just waltzes into a bathroom with you, has raw sex there in the stall, then walks away? That’s what you want us to believe?”

“I don’t want you to believe anything. That’s what happened.”

“How do you account for the bruises which were later photographed? And the hemorrhoids? The way she was physically violated?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you want us to believe that after leaving you, during her walk home, she was attacked by someone else? Someone else beat her up and left her bruised and bloodied?”

“I don’t care what you believe. It wasn’t me.”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

Quentin Johnson stepped down, and Nora glanced at Poppy, noting the way she looked at him, as if she wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. It made her furious, but she said nothing.

It was almost ten o’clock that evening when the attorneys and the judge started to try to determine whether to hear the closing arguments. All of them appeared exhausted, and said
that though they wanted to see an end to it all, it would be nice to put the most important part of the trial off till the next day. Nora left the courtroom and found Simone sitting outside, drinking a Diet Pepsi and waiting for the next move.

“So Poppy’s husband came. That’s a big deal. I feel like a celebrity,” she said.

“You’re bound to win, Simone. This guy was such a loser.”

“Well, you never know.”

At this point, Margaret walked out, moving with her athletic gait, and said, “The judge is putting off closing arguments till tomorrow. I think that’s a good thing. The jury is tired. Let’s just go home and sleep it off.”

“How does it look like it’s going?” Simone asked.

Margaret gave her a noncommittal smile and said, “You never know about these things. It’s best not to speculate. But don’t worry, you did fine. It’s now up to us, and the jury. It all comes down to how much they believed you.”

Outside on the courthouse steps, they waited for a cab—Nora, Simone, Poppy and Adam. Simone smoked a cigarette and looked peaceful, as if she had completed a work of art. “So was I believable?” she asked them.

“Of course you were,” Nora said.

Adam smiled, and Poppy just stared off into the night.

11

W
hen Nora came back to her room, the message light on her phone was not flashing. She sat down on the bed and stared at it, wondering what to make of it. He had said he would call. She called the operator to make sure that it was working, that she hadn’t missed a message. The operator said no one had called. “Oh, good,” Nora lied, not wanting to reveal her neediness to a stranger.

It was just as well. She was tired and wanted to go to sleep. She took a long bath, put on her nightgown and crawled into bed with a copy of
Cosmopolitan
magazine. She could hear in the distance the rumble of thunder. Another storm, she thought, to clear the air, cool things down for a little while. She was mildly disappointed that no one had wanted to go out on the town. She had thought Simone and Poppy and she might
do a little drinking, might even laugh and celebrate how well the trial had gone. But Adam’s arrival had thrown things out of kilter. And besides, Nora wasn’t certain that Poppy was completely onboard with Simone’s story. She could tell that Poppy seemed to be siding with the defendant, at least a little bit. Not that she doubted Simone had been raped. But she felt a little betrayed that certain details had been left out of Simone’s original account. Nora admitted to herself that it had thrown her at first, too, but after sitting through the trial, she decided she didn’t care. Even if the details leading up to the rape were spotty, the rape itself was consistent and believable. It didn’t sound like a story anyone would concoct. Why would she have done that? Why would Simone have put herself through this ordeal if she hadn’t been terribly violated? The man was a liar. His squirmy, fidgety posture on the stand convinced her of that. Nothing he said had sounded like the truth. But then, of course, it didn’t matter what she thought. Only what the jury thought mattered, and they had remained inscrutable. They had sat there, staring at their laps or at the wall, refusing to show any emotion or even the slightest degree of interest. Maybe they had it in for Simone because she was beautiful, because she was from California and she had a good job. Maybe they thought that even if this local man, this member of their community, had raped her, she had asked for it. It was a crazy, backward way to think, but it was not unimaginable. Nora thought of her own daughter having to grow up in a world like that, where women were expected to behave or pay the consequences. It was a horrifying thought. She wanted to call home, but it was far too late. Suddenly, she missed her daughter and wanted to hold her, to cuddle the way they sometimes did late at night when Annette couldn’t sleep. It was the only time Annette really wanted to be touched. She would curl up against her mother like a kitten, and they would watch some silly
movie on TV, and soon Annette would be snoring, her body rising and falling in a peaceful rhythm against Nora’s rib cage. She missed that. Michael never cuddled with her anymore. He was far too mature for that, too manly. Although as a child, he had been much more interested in physical contact than Annette was. As a baby, he always wanted to be held. Then one day, he just reached his limit. He did not want to be touched anymore. She supposed that reaction was normal, and she tried not to blame herself.

A terrible idea occurred to her. Could Michael be picking up on her distrust of men? Was that forcing him to move away from her? Worse, he might even understand the hostility she felt toward his father. Children could sense these things, all the magazines said. They noticed a change in energy, read between the lines, interpreted signals. As if the thought of raising her children weren’t daunting enough . . . now she had to confront the possibility that they were clairvoyant?

She decided to reject that notion out of hand. Experts be damned. She never badmouthed Cliff, and that was difficult enough. Her thoughts, she hoped and prayed, were still her own.

Besides, she had had her fill of child experts long ago, when Michael was a baby. One paragraph in some sacred manual said that the parent should not make a face or react in any way to a smelly diaper, lest the child should get the sense that the parent was disapproving of his waste.

“Great,” Cliff had said, when she read this aloud. “We’re raising an entire generation of kids who literally think their shit doesn’t stink.”

And they’d laughed, tossing the book immediately into the trash can.

They
had
laughed, Nora recalled. She hadn’t imagined it. It wasn’t all a lie.

The Cosmo Quiz was “Can This Relationship Work?” It
was meant to be taken alongside a partner. You were supposed to determine whether or not you had enough similar interests. The first question went like this:

Your ideal vacation would be:

1. A tropical place where you are required only to sit in the sun and order cocktails by the pool.
   

2. A European city, full of museums, fine restaurants and walks by the river in the moonlight.
   

3. Skiing in the Rockies, an outdoor Jacuzzi in the nude and a bottle of champagne by the bed.
   

4. Camping in Yosemite, beers on ice, franks on the fire.
   

Nora stared at the list for a long time and couldn’t decide. They all sounded good to her, and they all sounded equally impossible. She tended to take these quizzes as if they were real tests, as if there were a correct answer for which she would be commended. And in that spirit, she knew she should probably want to visit museums and take walks in the moonlight. Those choices made her sound like a more substantial person.

She was about to circle the letter
b when
there was a knock on the door. She sat up in bed, her heart hammering.

“Yes?” she called out from the bed.

“Are you in there? It’s me, Leo.”

She froze, not really knowing what to do. She wanted to see him, but she was lying there in bed, in a thin white cotton nightgown, devoid of any makeup, caught in the act of the Cosmo Quiz. She knew she had to respond, but she didn’t know how.

“Yes, I’m in here. Give me a second.”

“Hurry, please,” he said. “It’s starting to rain.”

She put the magazine down, then pushed it under the bed. She got up and smoothed down her nightgown, ran her fingers through her hair and decided, the hell with it, he should accept her as she was, if he was going to accept her at all.

She opened the door, and the humidity of the night rushed in, along with the singing sound of fresh rain. Leo stood there, in jeans, a white T-shirt and a denim jacket. He looked beautiful. He wasn’t as heavy as she remembered. She realized now that he was short and barrel-chested, not fat at all, just stout and well built. He had sleepy brown eyes and a welcoming smile.

“I guess I should have called,” he said.

“Oh, yes, well . . .”

He stepped inside the room and shook the rain out of his hair.

“Did you get my message?”

“Earlier, yes,” she said, “but we got back late and I didn’t feel like going out.”

“I waited at Harry’s for a while.”

“You could have called.”

“I didn’t have the number with me. I thought I’d take a chance.”

“Well, come on in and get dry.”

The room had a sitting area not far from the bed, a stiff-backed antique couch in front of an antique reproduction coffee table. He sat down and smiled at her, crossing his legs.

“You look nice like that,” he said.

“I was in bed.”

“You look good without makeup.”

“Oh, well. You know what they say. Makeup has a way of making you look older.”

“You look very young. And very pretty.”

“Are you drunk?” she asked.

He laughed. “No. I only had a Diet Coke at Harry’s. I was waiting to start drinking with you.”

“Oh. Well, I was at the trial all day.”

“How did it go?”

“It went pretty well. It was harrowing, but it was okay. Do you want something to drink?”

“Do you have anything?”

“Well, there’s an honor bar right outside my door. How about some wine?”

“Sure.”

She stepped out into the night. The rain was coming down harder now, and it pelted down on her hair and her night-gown, and she stepped in a couple of puddles. But the air was so hot it felt like a warm shower. She poured the drinks and when she came back, Leo was still smiling.

She handed him his glass of wine and he raised it, saying, “To New Orleans.”

“Oh, I don’t think I can drink to that.”

He shrugged. “To us, then.”

“Okay.”

They clinked and sipped their wine. She sat in a chair across from him.

He said, “I guess you think I’m the moodiest person on earth.”

“No, I don’t think that. There are a lot of moody people.”

“It’s just that when I’m with my kid, sometimes I’m pretty focused on that. When I’m away from her, I can let other things in. I came close to losing her, and I try very hard to make sure that I’m a good father.”

“How did you almost lose her?”

“By not being a good father, in the beginning. It’s a long
story.” He sipped his wine and smiled. “Now I’m on the verge of getting full custody. Her mother, who was so adamant about taking her away from me . . . well, now she’s met another man, so she wants her free time. I just want Nicole to grow up feeling wanted and valued. It’s tough.”

“Yes, being a parent is hard,” Nora said.

“Even harder when the parents hate each other.”

“Oh, I don’t know. My ex-husband and I dislike each other a lot. But we somehow keep it from the kids.”

“How do you do that?”

“Well, he does it by being absent from their lives. And I make sure I never talk negatively about him, no matter how angry I am.”

“You’re a strong woman.”

“No, I’m not. I’m very vindictive, but I’ve got time. I know that the kids will figure it out. It will have a stronger impact if they get there on their own.”

He nodded, sipping his wine. “That’s why you’re the stronger sex.”

She laughed. “Because we’re mean?”

“No. Because you’re patient.”

Nora thought about that, wondering if she were really patient or just passive, relying on nature to take its course, relying on her children to develop insights, growing into a natural wisdom. But there was no guarantee that would happen. There was no real reason to think they would ever side with her. If she continued to protect Cliff, and he continued to feed the lie, there was every chance they would grow up siding with him, just because he could invent a more pleasant story. Or an easier one to swallow. It occurred to her that she should start telling them her side of things soon.

Thinking of it made her feel like Simone on the witness stand, trying to get an indifferent jury to believe that her
story was more believable, even though it was far less pleasant. In the end, how did the truth get decided? If the jury turned against Simone, would that make her case any less valid? And if her kids didn’t believe that their father had misbehaved, would that be some failure on her part? Maybe so, in both cases. Because, she supposed, the burden was on the teller to make the audience trust that the bad deed had mattered, had done enough damage to warrant the rage and the hurt it left in its wake. The goal was not to get them to believe. The goal was to get them to care.

Leo said, “So how is Poppy these days? Is she happy?”

Nora was caught off guard, and she stopped herself from answering the way she wanted to. Why should they be talking about Poppy? If he wanted to know how she was, he should go across the courtyard to her room and ask her.

But she censored this thought, and she said, “Well, she’s as happy as anyone can be who is separated from her husband and attending her best friend’s rape trial.”

Leo laughed. “Poppy has a best friend?”

“What do you mean? She and Simone and I were very close.”

“But Poppy never got close to anyone. I was the best candidate for that, and for a while we were almost joined at the hip. Her old man was determined to put a stop to it, though, and the thing I could never get over was that he damn near succeeded.”

“But you didn’t take the money.”

“No. No, that wasn’t what broke us up. It was far more complicated than that.”

“Did you ever have any interest in seeing her again?”

He shrugged. “Out of curiosity, I guess. But I’ve known for a while that she was back in town, and I made no effort to see her. So I guess I’m not all that curious. Is she still pretty?”

“Yes, of course.”

“She cared a lot about that, you know. She acted like she didn’t, but whenever we were near a mirror, I was conscious of her stealing looks.”

“That doesn’t make her unique, as the gentle r goes.”

“But she had this weird thing where she also despised her looks. Or despised the fact that she was judged on them. You know, she was this debutante, this queen-of-the-ball-type person. Her father forced her to go through with that kind of thing. That’s why she . . .”

He stopped abruptly and stared at the floor.

“Why she what!” Nora asked.

He shook his head. Then he said, “It was why things ended badly between us. Finally she had to choose between my world and hers.”

“You’re saying she chose her father?”

“No, not at all. She totally rejected him. But then she seemed to set off on a journey, trying to find him again.” He yawned, an act of exhaustion and frustration rather than boredom. “I don’t really want to talk about her. Let’s talk about you.”

“There’s nothing to say. I’m pretty ordinary.”

“You don’t look so ordinary to me.”

She struggled to hide her smile. “Why did you want to see me again?”

“I enjoyed our talk,” he said. “About ethics. You had some interesting points of view.”

“I don’t think I really got to say much. I’m not a terribly ethical person.”

“Oh, really? How do you feel about the way your husband treated you? He left you for another woman, right?”

“Yes,” she said, blushing.

“And what did you think of that?”

“I thought it was vile.”

He nodded. “
Vile
is not a word that unethical people use.”

“I am capable of passing judgment. That doesn’t mean I’m ethical. Hitler did that.”