Presumed Innocent (16 page)

"She wasn't real neat, I'll say that. These records were in nice order when I gave them to her." I would ask Guerash if he's sure, but there's no point. It's the kind of thing he would remember, and I can see the orderly ranks of the remaining records. Besides, that would be like Carolyn, to take records that other people have spent years maintaining and treat them like debris.

Guerash out of instinct begins to sort the booking sheets and bond slips, and I help. Kenneally pitches in, too. We stand around his desk, cursing Carolyn. Each booking jacket should contain a police report, an arrest card bearing the defendant's photo and fingerprints, a complaint, and a bond slip, but none of these sixty or seventy files is complete. Papers are missing from each and the sheets inside have been turned back to front, and at angles. The numerical order is gone.

Kenneally keeps saying cunt.

We are about five minutes along before the obvious strikes me — this disorder is not accidental. These papers have been shuffled.

"Who the hell has been at these boxes since Carolyn?" I ask Kenneally.

"Nobody. They been sittin in the corner for four months, waitin for fuckhead here to put em back. Nobody but him and me even know they're here. Right?" he asks Guerash. Guerash agrees.

"Lionel," I ask, "do you know Tommy Molto?"

"Fuck yes, I know Tommy Molto. About half my life. Little fuck was a P.A. out here."

I knew that, if I had thought about it. Molto was notorious for his battles with the North Branch judges.

"Was he out here at the same time Carolyn was with probation?"

"Probably. Lemme think. Shit, Rusty, I don't keep a duty roster on these guys."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

Lionel ponders. "Three, four years. Maybe I run into him at a dinner or something. You know, he's all right. I see him, I talk. You know me."

"But he hasn't been looking at these records?"

"Hey," says Lionel, "watch my lips. You. Me. Guerash. Her. That's it."

When we are done sorting, Guerash goes through the files twice.

"One's missing, right?" I ask.

"We're missing a number," he says. "Could have been a mistake."

"You book sixty faggots, you don't exactly worry about keeping a perfect count," says Kenneally.

I ask Lionel, "But it could be that the file is gone?"

"That too."

"There would still be a court file, wouldn't there?" I ask. Kenneally looks at Guerash. Guerash looks at me. I write down the number. It should be on microfilm. Lipranzer will love doing this.

When Guerash is gone, I spend one more moment with Kenneally.

"You don't want to say what this is about maybe?" he asks.

"I can't, Lionel."

He nods. But I can tell it grates.

"Oh yeah," says Lionel, "those were funny old days around here. Lots of stories." His look lingers casually, just so I know that we both have our secrets.

Outside, there is real heat, 80 degrees. Pushing a record for April. In the car, I turn the radio to the news station. It's a live feed from the mayor's office. I just catch the tail end, but I hear enough of His Honor's blarney to get the drift. The P.A.'s office needs new blood, a new direction. The people want that. The people deserve that.

I am going to have to start looking for work.

Tee ball. In the waning light of the spring evening, play commences in the second-grade Fathers/Students League. The sky hangs low across the open field, a meadow of landfill laid over what was once a marsh, while Mrs. Strongmeyer's Stingers idly occupy the diamond, boys and girls sporting windbreakers zipped to the collars and baseball gloves. Dads creep along the baselines calling instructions as the dusk gathers in. At the plate, a behemoth of an eight-year-old named Rocky circles his bat two or three times in the vicinity of the rag ball perched atop the long-necked rubber tee. Then, with an astounding concentration of power, he smashes the ball into outer space. It lands in left center, beyond the perimeter of the Stingers' shaky defense.

"Nathaniel!" I yell, along with many others. "Nat!" Only now he wakes. He reaches the ball a step ahead of an agile sprite named Molly, whose ponytail flows behind her baseball cap. Nat grabs it, whirls, and wings it in a single motion. The ball travels in a tremendous arc back toward the infield and lands with a dead thump between shortstop and third, just as Rocky lopes across the plate. Following the local etiquette, I alone may scold my son, and so I stroll along the foul line, clapping my hands. "Wake up! Wake up out there." For Nat, I hold no fear. He shrugs, throws up his gloved hand, and displays the full range of his gap-toothed jack-o'-lantern smile, his new ragged-edged teeth still looking a little like candles stuck into a cake.

"Dad, I just lost it," he yells, "I really did." The pack of fathers on the side join me in sudden laughter. We all repeat the remark among ourselves. He lost it. Cliff Nudelman pats me on the back. At least the boy has learned the lingo.

Did other men, as boys, dream about their sons? I looked twenty years ahead with passion and with hope. As I always saw him, my son was a gentle, obedient soul. He was good; he was full of virtue and skill.

Nat is not like that. He is not a bad boy. That's a song around our house. Barbara and I have been telling each other that since he was two. Nat is not, we say, actually, we say, a bad boy. And I believe that. Fervently. And with a heart engorged with love. He is sensitive. He is kind. And he is wild and distracted. He has been on his own schedule since the time of his birth. When I read to him, he flips the pages in my hand to see what lies just ahead. He does not listen, or at least does not seem to care to. In school, he has always been a problem.

He is saved by his insouciant charm and his physical gifts. My son is beautiful. I am talking about more than the usual child-beauty, the soft features, the floral glow of being new. This boy has dark, acute eyes, a prepossessing look. These fine, regular features do not come from me. I am larger and squat. I have a bulky nose; a kind of Neanderthal ridge over the eyes. Barbara's people are all smaller and good-looking, and it is to them we routinely give the credit. Privately, however, I have often thought at moments, with discomfort, about my father and his piercing, somber, Slavic handsomeness. Perhaps because I suspect that source, I pray all the time, at my own inner altar, that this blessing should not lead Nat astray, into arrogance, or even cruelty — traits the beautiful people I have encountered have sometimes seemed to regard in themselves as natural afflictions, or worse, a sign of right.

With the end of the ball game, we disperse in pairs toward the herd of station wagons corraled in the gravel parking lot. In May, when the time changes and the weather mellows, the team will stay after the games to picnic. Sometimes a pizza delivery will be arranged. The fathers will rotate the weekly responsibility of bringing beer. After dinner, the boys and girls will renew their baseball game, and the dads will recline in the grass, talking casually about our lives. I look forward to these outings. Amid this group of men I do not know well, there seems a gentle compact, something like the way worshippers must feel about one another as they leave church. Fathers with their kids, beyond the weekly preoccupations of professional life, or even the pleasures and responsibilities of marriage. Fathers mildly lit on Friday nights, at ease with these immeasurable obligations.

In this cooler, darker season, I have promised Barbara that we will meet for a quick dinner at a local pancake house. She is waiting on the red vinyl bench when we arrive, and even while she is kissing Nat and receiving a report on the Stingers' near-triumph, she gazes beyond him to greet me with a look of cold reproof. We are in the midst of a dismal period. Barbara's fury with me for my role in the investigation of Carolyn's murder has not abated, and tonight I perceive at once that there is some new edge to her displeasure. My first thought is that we must be very late, but when I check the restaurant clock I find we are even a minute early. I can only guess at what I have done to provoke her.

For Barbara, though, it has become so easy over the years to disappear into the black forests of her moods. The elements of the outside world that might have once detained her by now have been relegated to the past. Six years of teaching in the North End struck at her faith in social reform. When Nat was born, she gave up being other-seeking. Suburban life, with its tight boundaries and peculiar values, has quieted her and exaggerated her willingness to be alone. Her father's death, three years ago, was taken as an act of desertion, part of his lifelong pattern of ignoring Barbara's and her mother's needs, and whetted her sense of deprivation. And our soulless moments of marital disconnection have robbed her of the outright gaiety that once counterpointed these darker spells. During these periods, her disappointments with virtually everyone are often worn so openly that at instants I believe the taste would be bitter if I were to grasp her hand and lick her skin.

And then the weather breaks. In the past it always has. Although this disruption, caused by my infidelity, is naturally the most prolonged one of our married life, I still maintain some expectation of improvement. Even now Barbara does not speak of lawyers and divorce, as she did in late November. She is here. Set out so plainly, this fact inspires some calm. I am like a shipwrecked survivor holding fast to the debris, awaiting the arrival of the scheduled liner. Sooner or later, I believe, I will see a woman of good humor, of blazing intelligence, full of quirky insight and sly wit, who is keenly interested in me. That is the person I still think of as my wife.

Now that same woman wears a look of diamond hardness as we wait in line to be seated. Nat has slipped away and gazes adoringly into the candy counter. His baseball pants have drooped almost to his shoe tops, and he stands with one knee and both hands against the glass case, staring with fixed appreciation at the forbidden rows of sugared gum and chocolate bars. He jiggles a bit, of course — the object in motion. As ever, Barbara and I both watch him.

"So?" she suddenly asks me. This is a challenge. I am supposed to entertain her.

" 'So' what?"

"So how's work? The big investigation still going gangbusters?"

"No leads," I tell her, "and no results. It's mass confusion. Frankly, the whole place is sagging. It's like they let the air out of a balloon. You know — now that Bolcarro has come out for Delay."

With the mention of this event, Barbara winces, then once more turns an acid eye on me. At last, I recognize my latest outrage. Yesterday I came home very late and stayed downstairs, thinking she was asleep. Barbara descended in her nightgown. From the staircase she asked what I was doing. When I told her I was working on my résumé, she turned directly and went back up.

"Raymond didn't mention making you a judge today?" she asks.

I wince myself, lanced with regret at the foolish vanity that led me to mention this prospect. My chances now are dim. Bolcarro showed two days ago how concerned he is about making Raymond Horgan happy.

"What do you want me to do, Barbara?"

"I don't want you to do anything, Rusty. I've stopped wanting you to do anything. Isn't that what you prefer?"

"Barbara, he did a good job."

"And what did he do for you? You're thirty-nine years old. You have a family. And now you're looking forward to unemployment compensation. He let you carry his bags and solve his problems, and when he should have quit, he took you with him down the drain."

"We did good things."

"He used you. People have always used you. And you don't just let them do it. You like it. You actually like it. You'd rather be abused than pay attention to the people who have tried to care about you."

"Is that supposed to mean you?"

"Me. Your mother. Nat. It's a lifelong pattern. It's hopeless."

Not Nat, I nearly answer, but a sense of diplomacy or self-preservation intervenes. The restaurant hostess, a tiny younger woman with the trimmed-up figure of the health-club set, leads us to our table. Barbara negotiates his meal with Nat. French fries yes, but milk, not Coke. And he must eat some salad. Nat whines and flops around. I cuff him gently and recommend sitting up straight. Barbara remains aloof behind the barrier of her menu.

Was she happier when I met her? That must have been the case, although I have no clear recollection. She tutored me when I connived — insanely — to beat the university science requirement by taking calculus. She never got the chance to collect her fee. She fell for me; I fell for her. I loved her ferocious intellect, her teen-queen beauty, her suburban clothes, the fact that she was a doctor's daughter, and thus, I thought, someone 'normal.' I even loved the rocky currents of her personality, her ability to express so many things which, to me, remained remote. Most of all, I loved her omnivorous passion for me. No one in my life had been so openly desirous of my company, so alight with manifest appreciation of every angle of my being. I met half a dozen men who coveted Barbara. She wanted only me, pursued me, in fact, with an ardor that I at first found embarrassing. I supposed it was the spirit of the era that made her want to soothe this awkward boy, dark and full of secret woe, whom she knew her parents would regard as less than she deserved.

Like me, like Nat, she was an only child, and she felt oppressed by her upbringing. Her parents' attentions had been suffocating and, she felt, in some ways false. She claimed to have been directed, used at all times as an instrument of their wishes, not her own. She told me often that I was the only person she had met who was like her — not just lonely, but always, previously, alone. Is it the sad reciprocity of love that you always want what you think you are giving? Barbara hoped I would be like some fairy-tale prince, a toad she had transformed with her caresses, who could enter the gloomy woods where she was held captive and lead her away from the encircling demons. Over the years I have so often failed in that assignment.

The atomized life of the restaurant spins on about us. At separate tables, couples talk; the late-shift workers dine alone; the waitresses pour coffee. And here sits Rusty Sabich, thirty-nine years old, full of lifelong burdens and workaday fatigue. I tell my son to drink his milk. I nibble at my burger. Three feet away is the woman whom I have said I've loved for nearly twenty years, making her best efforts to ignore me. I understand that at moments she feels disappointed. I understand at times she is bereft. I understand. I understand. That is my gift. But I have no ability to do anything about it. It is not simply the routines of adult life which sap my strength. In me, some human commodity is lacking. And we can only be who we can be. I have my own history; memories; the unsolved maze of my own self, where I am so often lost. I hear Barbara's inner clamor; I understand her need. But I can answer only with stillness and lament. Too much of me — too much! — must be preserved for the monumental task of being Rusty.