Now and Forever (21 page)

It was the day before the trial when everything finally stopped. Jessie had made arrangements at the shop to take a week off, two if things turned out that way. She left the boutique early and went for a long walk before going home to Ian. She found him sitting pensively in a chair, staring at the view. It was the first time she had seen him not working furiously on the new novel. That was all he seemed to do now, when he wasn't spending money, or silently and urgently taking her body. They talked less than they ever had. Even meals were either silent disasters or frantic and frenzied--never normal.

But that night they lit a fire together, and talked until dark. She felt as though she hadn't seen him in months. At last she was talking to Ian again, the man she loved, her husband, her lover, her friend. She had missed his friendship most of all in these endless lonely weeks. It was the first time they really hadn't been able to reach out to each other and help. Now they shared a quiet dinner, sitting on the floor in front of the fire. Their peacefulness made the trial seem less terrifying. And the reality of it had worn off in the weeks since Ian had been released from jail. Jail had been reality. Fighting her way upstream to bail had been reality. Leaving her mother's emerald ring had been reality. But what was the trial? Merely a formality. A verbal exchange between two paid performers, theirs and the State's, with a black-robed umpire looking on, and somewhere in the background a woman no one knew named Margaret Burton. A week, maybe two weeks, and then it would be over. That was the only reality.

She rolled over on her back on the rug in front of the fire and smiled up at him sleepily as he bent to kiss her. It was a long, haunting kiss that brought back the gentleness they had lost and made her body beg to respond, and in a few minutes they were hungrily making love. It was one of those rare nights when souls and bodies blended and ignited and burned on for hours. They said little, but they made love again and again. It was almost dawn when Ian deposited Jessica sleepily in their bed.

"I love you, Jessie. Get some sleep now. Tomorrow will be a long day." He whispered the words, and she smiled at his voice as she drifted off to sleep. A long day? Oh ... that's right ... the fashion show ... or was it that they were going back to the beach? ... She couldn't remember ... a picnic? Was that it?

"I love you too ..." Her voice drifted off as she fell asleep at his side, her arms wrapped around him like a small child's. He stroked her arm gently as he lay beside her, smoking a cigarette, and then he looked down into her face, but he wasn't smiling. Nor was he sleepy. He loved Jessica more than ever, but there were too many other things crowding his mind.

He spent the rest of the night in a lonely vigil. Watching his wife, thinking his own thoughts, listening to her breathe and murmur, wondering what would come next.

The next morning he was going on trial for rape.

The courtroom at City Hall was a far cry from the small room where the preliminary hearing had been held. This one looked like a courtroom in the movies. Gold leaf, wood paneling, long rows of chairs, the judge's bench set up high on a platform, and the American flag in plain view of all. The room was full of people, and a woman was calling names one by one. She stopped when she had twelve. They were selecting the jury.

Ian sat with Martin at the front of the room, at the desk assigned to the defense. A few feet away sat a different assistant district attorney, with Inspector Houghton at his side. Margaret Burton was nowhere in sight.

The twelve jurors took their seats, and the judge explained the nature of the trial. A few of the women looked surprised and cast glances at Ian, and one man shook his head. Martin made rapid notes and watched the prospective jurors closely. He had the right to excuse ten people from the jury, and the assistant D.A. could do the same. The faces looked innocuous, like those of people you'd see on a bus.

Martin had told Ian and Jessie earlier that morning about the nature of the jury he wanted. No "old maids" who would be shocked at the accusation of rape, or who might identify with the victim; yet perhaps they might try to hang on to some staunch middle-class housewives who might condemn Burton for allowing Ian to pick her up. Young people might be in sympathy with Ian, yet they might resent the way the couple looked, too comfortable for their age. They were walking a delicate line.

Jessie watched the twelve men and women from her seat in the front row, searching their faces and that of the judge. But just as Martin stood up to question the first prospective juror, the judge called a recess for lunch.

It was a slow process; it was the end of the second day before the jury had been picked. They had been interrogated by both attorneys as to their feelings about rape, had been questioned about their jobs and their mates, their habits and the number of children they had Martin had explained that fathers of women Miss Burton's age would not be a good idea either; they'd feel too protective of the victim. One had to consider so many things, and some base was inevitably left uncovered. There were a couple of people on the jury even now who did not meet with Martin's full approval, but he had used up his challenges, and now they had to hope for the best Martin had set up an easy bantering style with the jurors, and now and then someone had laughed at a foolish answer or a joke.

Finally the jury was set. Five men, three retired and two young, and seven women, five in their middle years and comfortably married, two young and single. That had been a stroke of good fortune. They hoped it would counterbalance two of the retired men Martin did not like. But on the whole, he was reasonably satisfied, and Ian and Jessie assumed he was right.

As they all left the courtroom at the end of the second day, Jessie felt as though she could have recited the jurors' life stories in her sleep, listed their occupations and those of their mates. She would have known their faces in a crowd of thousands, and would remember them for a lifetime if she never saw them again after that day.

Their first shock came on the third day. The quiet male assistant district attorney who had replaced the irritating female D.A. of the preliminary hearing did not appear in court. He had developed acute appendicitis during the night, it was reported to the court, and had been operated on early that morning for a perforated appendix. He was resting comfortably at Mt. Zion Hospital, which Jessica found to be small consolation. This news was reported to the judge by one of the sick man's colleagues, who happened to be trying a case in the adjoining courtroom. But His Honor was assured that a replacement had been chosen and would arrive at any moment. Jessie's and Ian's hearts sank. The woman from the preliminary hearing would be back on the case. It had seemed immeasurable good luck when she hadn't appeared at the opening of the trial, and now ...

Martin bent to whisper something in Ian's ear as the judge called a short recess while they waited for the new assistant D.A. to arrive. Everyone stood up, the judge left the courtroom, and there was a stretching and shuffling toward the halls. It was still early, and even a cup of coffee from one of the machines in the hall would taste good. It was something to do. Jessica could feel depression weighing on her shoulders as she held her small Styrofoam cup of steaming, malevolent-looking coffee. All she could think of was that damned D.A. and how badly her presence might hurt their case. She glanced at Ian, but he said nothing. And Martin had vanished somewhere.

He had told them not to discuss the case in the hall during recesses or lunch, and suddenly it was difficult to find banalities with which to break the silence. So they kept silent, standing close together with the look of refugees waiting for a train to arrive, but not really understanding what was happening to them.

"More coffee?"

"Hm?" her thoughts had been in limbo.

"Coffee. Do you want more coffee?" Ian tried it again. But she only shook her head with a vague attempt at a smile. "Don't worry so much, Jess. It'll be okay."

"I know." Words. All words. With no meaning behind them. Nothing had any meaning anymore. Everything was confusing, impossible to understand. What were they doing there? Why were they standing around like awkward mourners at a funeral? Jessica crushed out a cigarette on the marble floor and looked up at the ceiling. It was ornate and beautiful and she hated it. It was too fancy. Too elaborate. It reminded her of where she was. City Hall. The trial. She lit another cigarette.

"You just put one out, Jess." His voice was soft and sad. He knew what was happening too.

"Huh?" She squinted at him through the flame from her lighter.

"Nothing. Shall we go back?"

"Sure. Why not?" She tried a flip smile as she tossed the empty Styrofoam cup into a large metal ashtray filled with sand.

They walked back into the courtroom side by side, but not touching. Ian walked slowly toward the desk that set him and Martin apart from everyone else. And Jessica followed him with her eyes, watching him, watching. Martin rapidly scratch out notes on a long yellow legal pad. The perfect lawyer, the image caught in a pool of sunlight splashed bravely across the inlaid marble floor. She stared at the light for a minute, thinking of nothing, only wishing herself somewhere else, and then absentmindedly she looked across at the desk reserved for the assistant D.A.

There she sat. Matilda Howard-Spencer, tall, lean; everything about her seemed sharp. She had a narrow head with blunt-cut short blond hair, and long then agile hands that seemed ready to point accusing fingers. She wore a sober gray suit and a pale gray silk shirt, and her eyes almost matched her suit. Slate gray, and just as hard. Long, skinny legs, and the only piece of jewelry she wore was a thin gold band. She was married to Judge Spencer, whose name she had incorporated into hers, and she was the holy terror of the D.A.'s office. Her best cases were rapes. Neither Ian nor Jessie knew any of that, but Martin did, and he had wanted to cry as he'd watched her walk into the courtroom. She had the delicacy and charm of a hatchet delivered bull's-eye to the balls. He had tried another case against her once, and he hadn't won. Nobody had. His client had committed suicide nine days into the trial. He probably would have anyway, but still ... Matilda, darling Matilda. And all Ian and Jessie knew was what they saw and what they felt.

Ian saw a woman who made him nervous as she seemed to stalk within an invisible cage around her desk. Jessie saw a woman carved in ice, and sensed something that filled her with fear. Now it wasn't a game. It was a full-scale war. Just the way the woman looked at Ian told her that. She glared across at him once, and then through him several times, as though he were not a person to acknowledge, and considerably less than a man. She spoke to Houghton in a rapid flow of words, and he nodded several times, then got up and walked away. It was very clear who was in command. Jessica cursed the man with the appendix. This woman was one piece of luck they didn't need.

"All rise ..." The judge was back in his seat, and tension filled the air. He showed obvious pleasure at the new addition to the scene, and acknowledged her presence with a respectful greeting. Terrific.

Matilda Howard-Spencer made a few quick, friendly remarks to the jury, all of which they seemed to respond to. She could inspire confidence as well as fear. Her voice and manner exuded authority, and belied her age: she must be no older than forty-two or -three. She was someone you could count on, someone who would take care of business, take care of you, see that things worked. This was a woman who could fight a war, lead an army, and still manage to see that the children took Latin as well as algebra. But she had no children. She had been married for less than two years. The law was her lover. Her husband was only her friend, and he was a man well into his sixties.

The sparring began with one of the least interesting of witnesses. The medical examiner took the stand and said nothing damaging to Ian, nothing helpful to Margaret Burton. He testified only that he had examined her, that there had been intercourse, but that nothing more than that could be ascertained. Despite Matilda Howard-Spencer's best urging, he stuck to his assertion that there was no evidence that force had been used. Martin's objections to her near-badgering were rapidly quelled, but the testimony was too colorless to make much difference. It all seemed very boring to Jessica, and after an hour she settled her attention on the middle red nylon stripe in the flag. It was something to stare at as she tried to float away from where she was ... those words droning on endlessly ... "infamous crime against nature" ... sodomy ... rape ... intercourse ... rectum ... vagina ... sperm ... it was like a child's guide to fantasy. All those terrible words you looked up in the dictionary when you were fourteen, and were titillated by. Now she had a chance to try each one on for size. Vagina. The prosecutor seemed fond of that one. And rape. She said it with a capital letter "R."

The day ended at last, and they went home as silently as they had throughout the week. It was exhausting just being there, keeping up the front for those watchers in the jury box, for anyone who might be paying attention. If you frowned, the jury might think you were mad--mad at Ian--or upset. Upset? No, darling, of course not! If you smiled, it meant you took the proceedings too lightly. If you wore the wrong thing, you looked rich. Something too cheerful, and you looked flip. Sexy in court? At a rape trial? God forbid. Vagina? Where? No, of course I don't have one. It wasn't even frightening anymore, just exhausting. And that damned woman was relentless, squeezing every last thought and word out of the witnesses. And Martin was such a fucking gentleman. But what did it matter anymore? If they could just stay awake and keep turning up in court, soon it would be over. Soon ... but it seemed as though it had just begun. There were lifetimes to go. They hardly said a word over dinner that night, and Jessica was fast asleep in her bathrobe before Ian came out of the shower. It was just as well; he was too tired to say anything. And what was there to say?