Presumed Innocent (53 page)

Right after the trial I noticed that there was still a crust of blood and one blond hair clinging to the edge of one of the two teeth. I stared at the Whatchamacallit for a long time, then I took it to the basement and washed it in the laundry tub. Barbara came downstairs as I was doing it. She stopped dead on the stairway when she saw me, but I tried to appear jovial. I reached for the hot water and began to whistle.

I have picked it up a dozen times since then. I want to observe no fetishes, no taboos. And after a moment for reflection, I decide it is not the Whatchamacallit singing to me like a ghost. Instead, as I consider the grass, the roses and their thorns, the vegetable bed that I helped Barbara put in this spring, there is the sense of something in this house, this land that is irretrievably used up and old. I am finally ready for some considered changes. I find Barbara in the dining room, where she is grading papers. They are stacked across the table like my mother's magazines and notecards from her era as a radio personality. I sit down on the other side.

"We should think about moving back into the city," I tell her.

I expect, of course, that this concession will bring from Barbara the radiance of victory. She has advocated this move for many years. Instead, Barbara puts down her pen and holds her forehead. She says, "Oh, God."

I wait. I know something awful is going to happen. I am not scared.

"I didn't want to talk about this yet, Rusty."

"What?"

"The future," she says, and adds, "I didn't think that it would be fair to you. So soon."

"All right," I say. "You've nodded in the direction of good taste. Why don't you tell me what's on your mind?"

"Rusty, don't be like that."

"I'm like that. I'd like to hear."

She folds her hands.

"I've taken a job for the January term at Wayne State."

Wayne State is not in Kindle County. Wayne State is not within four hundred miles of here. Wayne State, as I recall, is in a city I have visited once, which is called Detroit.

"Detroit, right?"

"Right," she says.

"You're leaving me?"

"I wouldn't put it like that. I'm taking a job. Rusty, I hate to do this to you now. But I feel I have to. They had hired me for the September term. I was going to tell you in April, but then all that craziness began—" She shivers her head with her eyes closed. "Anyway, they were nice enough to give me an extension. I've changed my mind half a dozen times. But I've decided it's for the best."

"Where's Nat going to be?"

"With me, of course," she answers, her look suddenly fierce and aquiline. On this point, she means to say, there must not be even a thought that she might yield. It occurs to me, as a sort of reflex, that I could probably go to court and try to prevent that. But just now I have had enough of litigation. In its odd way, the thought inspires a smile, rueful and brief, a reaction which brings a vaguely hopeful look to Barbara.

"What do you mean you're not leaving me, you're taking a job?" I ask. "Am I invited to Detroit?"

"Would you come?"

"I might. This isn't a bad time for me to start over. There are a few unpleasant things following me around here."

Barbara immediately tries to correct me. She has thought all of this through, perhaps to salve her conscience, probably because there are always these geometries in her head.

"You're a hero," Barbara says. "They wrote about you in
The New York Times
and
The Washington Post.
I've been expecting you to tell me any day that you're going to run for office."

I laugh out loud, but this is a sad remark. More than anything Barbara has said, it proves how far we have already drifted. We have again ceased communication. I have not told her enough for her to understand my own thoroughgoing revulsion with what has gone on in the interest of politics.

"Would it offend you if I moved somewhere closer than here so that I can see my son? Granting that we're not about to live in the same house."

She looks at me.

"No," she says.

I consider the wall for a moment. My God, I think. What happens in a life. And then I think once more of how this all began and pine, as I have so often lately. Oh, Carolyn, I think. What did I want with you? What did I do? But it is not as if I am entirely without an account.

I am nearly forty now. I can no longer pretend that the world is unknown to me, or that I like most of what I've seen. I am my father's son. That is my inheritance — the grimness of outlook bred of knowing that there is more cruelty in life than simple wits can comprehend. I do not claim that my own sufferings have been legion. But I have seen so much. I saw my father's hobbled soul, maimed by one of history's great crimes; I saw the torment and the need, the random and passionate anger that brings such varied and horrible misbehavior to our own streets. As a prosecutor I meant to combat it, to declare myself a sworn enemy of the crippled spirit that commits each trespass with force and arms. But of course, it overcame me. Who can observe that panorama of negative capacity and maintain any sense of optimism? It would be easier if the world were not so full of casual misfortune. Golan Scharf, a neighbor, has a son born blind. Mac and her husband, in a moment of revelry, turn a corner and plunge into the river. And even if luck, and luck alone, spares us the worst, life nonetheless wears so many of us down. Young men of talent dull it and drink it all away. Young women of spirit bear children, broaden in the hips, and shrink in hope as middle years close in upon them. Every life, like every snowflake, seemed to me then unique in the shape of its miseries, and in the rarity and mildness of its pleasures. The lights go out, grow dim. And a soul can stand only so much darkness. I reached for Carolyn. With all deliberation and intent. I cannot pretend it was an accident, or serendipity. It was what I wanted. It was what I wanted to do. I reached for Carolyn.

And so now, still gazing at the wall, I begin to speak, saying aloud things that I had promised myself would never be spoken.

"I've thought a lot about the reasons," I say. "Not that anyone can fully comprehend them. Whatever you call that insane mix of rage and lunacy that leads one human being to kill another — it's not the kind of thing that's easy to understand in any ultimate way. I doubt anybody — not the person who does it or anyone else — can really grasp the whole thing. But I've tried. I really have tried. I mean, one thing I should say to start, Barbara, is that I apologize to you. I think a lot of people would find that laughable. That I would say that. But I do.

"And one more thing you've got to know. You have to believe it: she was never more important to me than you are. Never. I guess, to be unflinchingly honest, there must have been something there that I didn't believe I could find anywhere else. That was
my
failing. I admit it. But as you've told me yourself, I was absolutely obsessed with her. It would take hours to explain why. She had that power; I had that weakness. But I know goddamn well that I wouldn't have gotten over her for years, and probably never, as long as she was walking around. I mean, there is no such thing as justification here, or excuse. I'm not trying to pretend there is. But at least we should both acknowledge the circumstances.

"I always figured it wasn't going to do anybody much good to talk about it. And I assumed that was what you'd figured. What happened happened. But naturally I've spent a lot of time thinking about exactly how it occurred. I could hardly help that. I guess every prosecutor learns that we live closer than we want to believe to real evildoing. Fantasy is a lot more dangerous than people like to say. You get this idea, this careful elaborate plan, it becomes actually stimulating to think about it, it titillates and thrills you, you dwell on it, and you take the first step toward carrying it out, and that is thrilling and titillating, too, and you go on. And in the end, once you edge up to it that way, telling yourself all along that no real damage has been done, it takes just one extraordinary moment, when you revel in the excitement, in the feeling of flying free, for the whole thing actually to occur."

I finally look back. Barbara is on her feet now, standing behind her chair. Her look is quick and alarmed, as well it might be. No doubt she never wanted to hear this. But I go on.

"As I said, I really never thought I'd have to talk about this, but I raise it now, because I think once and for all it ought to be said aloud. There's no threat here. There's not even the shadow of a threat, okay? God knows what somebody in your position might think, Barbara, but there is not a threat. I just want the cards on the table. I don't want there to be wondering about what either of us knows or thinks. I don't want that to be a factor in whatever it is we're going to do. Because all in all, even though you're probably amazed to hear me say all of this, and then say this, too, I expected, I guess the word is wanted, is
want,
to go on. There are a lot of reasons. Nat, first of all. Of course. And I also want to minimize the damage to our lives. But more than that, I do not want that mad act to have had no decent consequence. And basically, in trying to explain to myself how and why this woman was murdered — for what little rational impulses have to do with it, and for what little they are worth as explanations — I suppose I always thought that in part it was for us. For us. For the good of us. God knows a lot of it was simply for my benefit, to — if conscience can stand those words — get even. But I thought some of it was for us, too. And so I wanted to say that, to see if all of this means anything to you or makes any difference."

I am finished at last, and feel strangely satisfied. I have done as well with this as I ever could have imagined. Barbara, my wife, is crying, very hard, and silently. She is looking downward while the tears simply fall. She heaves and catches her breath.

"Rusty, I don't think there is anything worth saying, except I'm sorry. I hope you believe me someday. I really am so sorry."

"I understand," I tell her. "I believe you now."

"And I was prepared to tell the truth. At any time. Right up to the end. If I was called as a witness, I would have told what happened."

"I understand that, too. But I didn't want that. Frankly, Barbara, it wouldn't have done a bit of good. It would have sounded like some desperate excuse. Like you were making a bizarre effort to save me. Nobody ever would have believed that you were the one who killed her."

These words bring fresh tears, and then, finally, control. It has been said and she is, in a measure, relieved. Barbara wipes each eye with the back of her hands. She breathes deeply. She speaks, looking down at the table.

"Do you know what it feels like to be crazy, Rusty? Really crazy? To not be able to get any hold of who you are? You never feel safe. I feel like every step I take, the ground is soft. That I'm going to fall through it. And I can't go on that way. I don't think that I can be a normal person again if I'm living with you. I know how horrible that is. But it's horrible for me, too. No matter what I thought, nobody goes back to the way things used to be after something like this. All I can say, Rusty, is that nothing turned out the way I expected. I never understood the reality of any of it until the trial. Until I sat there. Until I saw what was happening to you, and finally felt how much I didn't want that to be happening. But that's part of what I can't get over. I have no life here, except being sorry. And afraid. And, of course — 'ashamed' is not the word. 'Guilty'?" She shakes her head slowly, looking down at the table. "There isn't a word."

"We could try to share that, you know. The blame," I say. Somehow, in spite of myself, this remark has a whimsical quality. Barbara gasps a bit. She bites her lip suddenly. She looks the other way for a second, and, in a momentary exhalation, cries. Then she shakes her head again.

"I don't think that's right," she says. "The trial came out the way it should have, Rusty."

That's all she says. I might have hoped for more, but it's enough. She starts to leave the room, but stops and lets me hold her for a moment, actually a long moment as she lingers with me, but finally she breaks away. I hear her go upstairs. I know Barbara. She will lie on our bed and weep a while longer. And then she is going to get back on her feet. And begin packing to leave.

One day, right after Thanksgiving, when I've come to town for Christmas shopping, I see Nico Della Guardia walking down Kindle Boulevard. He holds his raincoat drawn closed around the collar and he has a worried brow. He seems to be looking up and down the street. He is coming in my direction, but I am quite certain he has not seen me yet. I think of ducking into a building, not because I am afraid of his response, or mine, but simply because I think it might be easier for both of us to avoid this meeting. By then, however, he has caught sight of me and he is heading deliberately my way. He does not smile, but he offers his hand first, and I take it. For that instant only, I am rifled by a shot of terrible emotion — hot pain and grief — but it quickly passes and I stand there, looking affably at the man who, in any practical sense, tried to take my life from me. One person, a man in a felt hat, apparently aware of the momentousness of this meeting, turns to stare as he continues on his way, but otherwise the pedestrian traffic merely divides about us.

Nico asks me how I am. He has the earnest tone people lately have tended to adopt, so I know that he has heard. I tell him anyway.

"Barbara and I split up," I say.

"I heard that," he says. "I'm sorry. I really am. Divorce is a bitch. Well, you know. You had me crying on your shoulder. And I didn't have the kid. Maybe you guys can work it out."

"I doubt that. Nat's with me for the time being, but only until Barbara gets settled in Detroit."

"Too bad," he says. "Really. Too bad." Old Nico, I think, still repeating everything.

I turn to let him go on his way. I offer my hand first this time. And when he takes it, he steps closer and squeezes up his face so that I know that what he is about to say is something he finds painful.