An Imperfect Spy (20 page)

“We come now,” the speaker continued, “to the prize offered for the best essay on law and gender, so strangely declined by the dean and the faculty. Why did they decline it? Because they do not consider gender a proper subject for an essay in the
Law Review
? Because they do not wish to discuss gender at all, preferring to have the fact that there are no tenured women on the faculty pass unnoticed? The dean gives no reason, and I am deeply puzzled to imagine what reason, apart from prejudice and a reluctance to change, he can have. I move that this body recommend to the dean the continuance of the clinic and the course on law and literature, and the immediate acceptance of the prize offered by the late Nellie Rosenbusch’s brother. All in favor say aye.”

The rafters shook with all the
ayes
shouted. (“I never felt rafters shake before,” Kate commented to Reed. “Me neither,” said Blair, who overheard her. “Certainly not these rafters.”)

“Such a motion is out of order,” the dean shouted when the decibel count eventually lowered.

“It is not,” said the student speaker. “I spent most of last night with
Robert’s Rules of Order
.”

“This is not a meeting in which such rules apply,” the dean fairly screamed.

“Then I withdraw my motion temporarily, and replace it with a motion that this body agree to be in session for such a resolution. All in favor say …” Again the rafters shook with loud
ayes
. “We have to
have a second before we vote; sorry about that,” the student amended. “Do I have a second?” He had, the noise confirmed, a second. “Now, all in favor …”

Clearly the dean was shaking with the rafters. “I move that this meeting be adjourned,” he screamed. “Seconded,” shouted Professor Slade. The microphones were disconnected, the lights were turned off, all except for the exit signs, and the dean, together with most of the faculty, departed by way of the stage entrance.

“We better stay put if we don’t want to be trampled to death,” Harriet suggested. But, it soon became evident, they were less in danger of being trampled than engulfed. “What do we do now?” the students shouted at Kate and Reed and Blair. Blair, gathering from the glances of Kate and Reed that he had been appointed spokesperson, stood up.

“My advice,” he said as the hall quieted down, “is to let the publicity do its work. My guess is that within a week you will have won all your points. If not, let’s regroup. We’ve only got two more weeks to the semester and then exam period, so I suggest we take some action, if action is necessary, exactly one week from today. If you will elect a committee of three to represent you, I’ll be glad to meet with you at that time.”

After a certain amount of buzzing, this offer and advice were accepted. Kate and Reed and Harriet congratulated Blair. “I spoke to Charles Rosenbusch this morning,” Blair told them, “and he promises that if his offer of the prize is refused, he’ll make
sure the press learns of it. Considering his dislike of publicity, that shows that he’s determined on this matter. So, in case you hadn’t gathered, am I.”

When Kate and Reed finally made their way out of the hall and onto the street, they were happy to stroll together, feeling as though some hurdle had been passed, not just for Schuyler Law but for them, too.

“I heard something funny yesterday,” Reed said. “They had an earthquake in Oregon a while ago, not a profound one, but noticeable. And a friend, who’d come to town for a conference, said he and his wife, both hard workers who rarely reached home at the same time and who even less often had time to relax together, seated on their couch, had achieved this miracle on the day of the earthquake, and, he told me, ‘As we were sitting side by side on the couch, the earth moved.’ I rather liked it.”

“You seem very chirpy,” Kate observed. “Any other good news, apart from the earth moving in Oregon?”

“Yes. Thank you for asking. They’ve agreed to review Betty Osborne’s case. I don’t know what you said, Kate—she credited you completely for having reached the decision to try—but not only is she agreeing, she’s come up with some lovely information making it quite clear that the defense did not use evidence they had, and the prosecution witnesses lied under oath. It’s most promising.”

“You think the jury will let her off this time?”

“No jury yet, my love. There will be a habeas
corpus hearing, at which all the suppressed evidence will surface. We’ll find out if the prosecution knew and deliberately suppressed it. After the hearing, a judge will probably vacate her conviction. A retrial is possible but not likely; if she wins on habeas, she could be retried. But I’m pretty sure the state won’t retry her because, given the hanky-panky, the prosecution would be too embarrassed to try her again.”

“What sort of suppressed evidence?”

“That people knew she had been battered, people at the school. That they brought pressure on her not to hire a different defense lawyer—they got to the one she had—and they took full advantage of the fact that she was in shock, having just shot her husband and lost her children. To say nothing of the fact that the battered woman syndrome was not evoked.”

“Do you think she’ll get the children back?”

“If she’s exonerated she’s got a good chance. Although the fact that she did shoot their father will always be a problem. That’s not going to go away. But there is a best-possible outcome, and I hope we get it. Bobby has been very useful, by the way, and has worked hard on all fronts. I had a long consultation with her today, and we’re both pretty certain that Betty Osborne will have another chance.”

“Will Schuyler Law survive in an improved state?”

“Oh, I think so,” Reed said, “unless some other institution decides to take it over and is able to bring about some reforms.”

“Well,” Kate said, “I’m feeling after today’s
meeting that we accomplished more than we could have hoped. Maybe we became moles in the best le Carré tradition; certainly Schuyler never guessed what it was in for when they agreed to hire us. But I think we’ve made something moribund a little livelier.”

“And getting the Osborne habeas through will always be something I’m glad I did,” Reed said. “And I am convinced that clinic we started will make an important contribution to Schuyler, the students, and to some people in prison. Prisoners need good lawyers, the students learn a lot, and with Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, voting in favor of beating prisoners and letting them inhale smoke all day, we have to take some countermeasures, however few. The important thing is, I’ve got you back. I have, haven’t I, Kate?”

“You never lost me, not really. I would have fought Bobby like a tiger for my man. Is she over that, you think, not that you ever admitted in so many words that she was in it in the first place?”

“Is any of us ever over anything? We get to the point where we can claim to be over things, and that’s the best there is.”

“Really,” Kate said. “How circumspect you have become. I thought over was over.”

“How’s your over?” Reed asked. “What do you say to a ferry ride? We can climb up to the highest deck.”

“Let’s not and say we did,” Kate responded, remembering a popular response from her childhood. Which shows, she thought, that even the most intellectual
of devoted couples can become silly asses given the right motivation.

The next day, there was a message from Charles Rosenbusch, leaving his number. Kate called him back.

“I’ve never been so offended in my life,” he said. “Not even when some famous critic insisted that Robert Frost was a better poet than Wallace Stevens.”

“You don’t like Frost?” Kate asked.

“Of course I like Frost, but it’s perfectly idiotic to call him a better poet than Wallace Stevens. What on earth are we talking about? Do you have this effect on everybody?”

“I didn’t say a word,” Kate reminded him. “You can’t blame me if you had to reach for a comparison to Schuyler’s behavior.”

“You’re right, of course. I’m behaving badly. But by god, I’m going to make one hell of a fuss about this prize. They didn’t kill Nellie, I told that truthfully enough, they didn’t push her under the truck. But they certainly did their best to beat her down. I want you to advise me how to get the most publicity possible.”

“After yesterday’s meeting,” Kate said—and she told him about it—“you may not have to do anything. I suspect that the school is going to have to back down on all its points, except not asking Reed and me back, and we hadn’t the faintest intention of coming back anyway. Blair—you spoke to Blair—has arranged for a week to allow Schuyler gracefully
to reverse itself, after which dreadful things are planned. Why don’t you wait and see what happens in that week?”

“Sold,” Rosie said. “Kate, I want to thank you. No, don’t protest, I insist upon saying this. Your coming here, which must have seemed like a fool’s errand when you did it, made a change for me. It shook me up. Not you or what you said, but just the fact of the intrusion, of speaking about Nellie, of realizing that I’d sunk into a mire of self-pity.”

“I had nothing to do with all that,” Kate assured him when he paused for breath. “I galloped off in all directions like an idiot, trying to prove a murder in the face of all the facts just because I needed to do something. If I inadvertently helped you, you helped me even more. In addition to which,” she added in a concluding sort of voice, “I was presented with a book of poems inscribed by the author. I’m waiting eagerly for the next volume, which I hope you will also inscribe.”

“You’ve got it,” Rosie said.

Eleven

I
T
was some days later that Kate summoned Harriet to a meeting in her, Kate’s, living room. Harriet, behaving like a perfect guest, allowed the doorman to ring up and ask for admittance.

“I wondered when you’d decide to have it out,” Harriet said. Offered a drink, she declined firmly: her hour for imbibing was still a long way off. “One has to have rules about these things,” she said.

“I somehow got the impression you didn’t believe in rules,” Kate remarked, offering coffee instead.

Harriet declined that also. “I’ve decided to ignore many rules of our society, since, as far as that society knows, I’ve died and gone to heaven. But I have my own system of morals and rules, every bit as good and sometimes better.”

Here she paused, in an attitude of attentiveness.

“Good news about Betty Osborne,” Kate said, and told her what Reed had reported.

“I’m really glad,” Harriet said. “I worked a good bit with battered women, you know. It’s horribly discouraging. I had to give it up.”

“Why?”

“They all go back. They don’t have anywhere else to go, they were probably beaten as children, or saw their mothers being beaten. No program I worked with, or any other, I bet, had the money to keep them more than thirty days at the most, and then they’d go back to the same old thing. They gave different reasons—he would reform, the children missed their father, it was home, and on through even sillier excuses, but the fact was they hadn’t been given enough independence and enough training and counseling. Our wonderful society can’t find the money to give it to them. After not very long, I got burned out, and I wasn’t even doing it except as a volunteer.”

“Are you saying that Betty Osborne hadn’t a chance?”

“Not at all, my dear. Ms. Osborne shot the bastard. He isn’t there to go back to, and anyway, she took charge of her own life, in a manner of speaking. Once she got into jail, I thought she would probably just rot there, punishing herself, but you see, you and Reed have made a difference. She’s got a chance, one of the few.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“Tell me again why you came to New York,” Kate said, breaking the silence.

“I told you that, dear Kate. Are you having memory lapses, and you so young and spry?”