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“He oughtn’t, it’s not my doing.” She sighed contentedly. “Anyway, your bride comes with a dowry. If you can afford to keep me and however many children you deem sufficient, then my dowry ought to buy us a really decent house. I love this apartment, but it’s not suitable for raising a family.”
“No,” he said, taking her hands, “you keep your dowry for yourself. Then if you change your mind, you’ll have enough to go home to London. I’m not short of a buck, honest.”
“Well,” she said, “then think about this, Carmine. When he read Roger Parson Junior’s circular, Addison Forbes went right off the deep end. Work under Frank Watson? He’d rather die of tertiary syphilis! He announced that he’s going to work with Nur Chandra at Harvard, but I would have thought that Harvard isn’t short of clinical neurologists, so I hope Addison isn’t holding his breath. The thing is, I love the Forbes house with a passion. If the Forbeses do move, I suppose it will sell for heaps of money, but do we have a financial hope of buying it? Do you rent, or do you own this?”
“It’s a condo, I own it. I think we’ll be able to spring for the Forbes house, if you like it so much. The location is ideal — East Holloman, my family neighborhood. Try to like my family, Desdemona,” he pleaded. “My first wife thought they spied on her because Mom or Patsy’s mom or one of our sisters was always calling around. But it wasn’t that. Italian families are close knit.”
Though she hadn’t really changed in appearance, somehow to Carmine she wasn’t as plain as she used to be. Not love blinding his eyes; love opening them was a better way to put it.
“I’m rather shy,” she confessed, squeezing his fingers, “and that makes me seem snobby. I don’t think I’m going to have any trouble liking your family, Carmine. And one of the reasons why I’m so keen on the Forbes house is its tower. If Sophia ever wanted to come home, perhaps attend the Dormer Day School and then the bruited coeducational Chubb, it would make such super digs for her. From what you’ve told me, I think Sophia needs a real home, not Hampton Court Palace. If you don’t catch her now, in another year she’ll be skipping off to Haight-Ashbury.”
Tears came into his eyes. “I don’t deserve you,” he said.
“Rubbish, you must! People always get what they deserve.”
1966
n the week that followed Wesley le Clerc’s indictment for the murder of Charles Ponsonby, the mood changed statewide, ardently fueled by television. Public indignation at the existence of a Connecticut Monster grew rather than died down; he was seen as proof of godlessness, decayed morals, absent ethics, a world gone insane under the pressures of modernity, the avalanche of technology. The community was tolerating these genetic sports, allowing them to mature into a new kind of killer; yet no one grasped the fact that they presented as ordinary and law-abiding citizens. Or indeed that they were multiplying.
Wesley had been charged with first-degree murder, the premeditated kind, and the only legal argument could be about that premeditation. Having put himself in the limelight, Wesley knew full well that in order to stay there, he had to go on trial. A plea of guilty meant that his only appearance in court would be for sentencing. Therefore he pleaded not guilty, and was remanded for trial without the granting of bail. Outside the court after this hearing, Wesley was accosted by a high-profile white lawyer who introduced himself as the leader of Wesley’s new defense team. A cluster of other white fatcat lawyers behind him were the rest of the team. To their horror, Wesley rejected them.
“Fuck off and tell Mohammed el Nesr that I have seen the true light,” Wesley said. “I will do this the poor black trash way, with a lawyer assigned from the public defender’s office.” His hand indicated a young black man with a briefcase. A faint shadow of pain crossed his face, he sighed. “Could have been me in ten years’ time, but I have chosen my course.”
Once the exaltation of that ride back to the cells in the company of Carmine Delmonico had died away, Wesley had undergone a sea change that perhaps had a little to do with what Carmine had said to him, but a great deal more to do with witnessing from a distance of three feet the life go out of a pair of eyes. All that was left of Charles Ponsonby was a husk, and what terrified Wesley was that he had liberated that unspeakably evil spirit to seek a home in some other body. Allah warred with Christ and Buddha, and he began to pray to all three.
Yet strength poured into him too, a different strength. He would somehow manage to make of this cardinal mistake a victory.
A trial that went on at the beginning of June, months before it should have; the judicial Powers That Be decided that delaying it would only make matters worse. This wasn’t a nine days’ wonder that people would forget. Do it now, get it over and done with!
Never had a jury been chosen with more care. Eight were black and four white, six women and six men, some affluent, some simple workers, two jobless through no fault of their own.
His story on the stand was that he hadn’t planned a thing beyond the hat — that a surge in the crowd had put him where he ended — and that he didn’t remember firing any gun, couldn’t even remember having a gun on his person. The fact that the deed was immortalized on videotape was irrelevant; all he had ever meant to do was protest the treatment of his people.
The jury opted for unpremeditated murder and strongly recommended leniency. Judge Douglas Thwaites, not a lenient man, handed down a sentence of twenty years’ penal servitude, twelve before a chance of parole. About the verdict expected.
A.M.
on Monday, and it was very well organized. The terrified inhabitants of Holloman boarded up store windows, doors and downstairs windows, dreading the urban war that was sure to come.
On Sunday morning the Governor called out the National Guard, which trundled and roared into Holloman at dawn on Monday to occupy the Green ahead of the marchers; troop carriers, armored vehicles and massive trucks shook building foundations as all of Holloman huddled, wide-eyed, trembling, to watch them grind by.
But the marchers never came. No one really knew why. Perhaps it was the prospect of a confrontation with trained troops deterred them, or perhaps Maltravers Park was as far as most had ever wanted to go. By noon of Monday, Maltravers Park was empty, was all. The trial of Wesley le Clerc went on with less than five hundred protesters on Holloman Green amid a sea of National Guards, and when the verdict was announced on Friday afternoon those five hundred went home as meekly as lambs. Was it the official display of official force? Or had the mere act of congregating satisfied those who came to Maltravers Park?
I
am The Man.
armine and Desdemona were married at the beginning of May, and elected to honeymoon in L. A. as the guests of Myron Mendel Mandelbaum; the facsimile of Hampton Court Palace was so enormous that their presence was no embarrassment to Myron or to Sandra. Myron was theirs for the asking, whereas Sandra floated on cloud nine in oblivion. A little to Carmine’s and Myron’s surprise, Sophia decided to like Desdemona, whose hypothesis was that her new stepdaughter approved of the no-gush, matter-of-fact way her new stepmother treated her. Like a responsible, sensible adult. The omens were propitious.
All of which meant that Desdemona was able to offer Sophia tenure of the tower.
“It’s quite divine,” she said casually, not wanting to sound too enthusiastic. “The top room has a widow’s walk — you could use it as your living room — and the room beneath would make a tiny bedroom if we chopped off a bit of it to make a bathroom as well as a kitchenette. Carmine and I thought that perhaps you could finish high school at the Dormer, then think about a good university. Who knows, Chubb might be coeducational before you’re old enough to begin your degree. Would you be interested?”
The sophisticated teenager shrieked with joy; Sophia flung her arms around Desdemona and hugged her. “Oh, yes, please!”
