Protect and Defend (39 page)

“I am. But that was
all
abortions …”

“And that Koop reported that the prior research on psychological risk—including the study you rely on—was so inept that it could not support either side?”

Gersten folded his arms. “My own experience suggests that late-term abortion is qualitatively different. Especially when it conflicts with the woman’s own beliefs.”

“Might not that supposed trauma, at least to Mary Ann, be relieved by the hope of preventing infertility?”

Briefly, Gersten examined his fingernails. In grudging tones, he said, “It could. I don’t know that it will.”

“Wouldn’t it
further
minimize any trauma if the Tierneys gave her love and support—even if she chose abortion?”

“Again, it could.”

“So your prediction of trauma is a self-fulfilling prophecy, based on the Tierneys’ permanent disapproval.”

Gersten glanced at Martin Tierney. “It will be hard for them, given their deep beliefs, not to feel wounded …”

“What about the wounds they’ve inflicted on Mary Ann?” Resting her hand on Mary Ann’s shoulder, Sarah spoke each word with precision. “In your opinion, do the Tierneys love their daughter enough to forgive her for violating their beliefs?”

Stricken, Martin Tierney turned to Mary Ann. “They love her,” Gersten said at last. “Of that I’m sure. But the question of forgiveness is beyond my sphere of competence.”

Grim-faced, Mary Ann looked away. “Indeed,” Sarah said. “Yet you say the Protection of Life Act serves a salutary purpose. Would that be true if the Tierneys were physically abusive?”

“Perhaps not.”

“Or where the father rapes the daughter?”

“No—not then.”

“Or if the parents are fundamentalists, and want to punish their daughter for having sex?”

“No.”

“Or come from a culture which views a daughter’s sexuality with shame?”

Gersten hesitated. “Shared cultures,” he said, “often have shared values—”

“Congress,” Sarah interjected caustically, “didn’t make those fine distinctions, did they?”

“No.” Gersten folded his hands. “But in each case you mention, Ms. Dash, the minor child can go to court.”

As before, Sarah summoned an artificial expression of surprise. “So a minor too immature to choose abortion has the maturity to select a lawyer and file a lawsuit?”

Gersten started to speak, then stopped himself. Tentative, he said at last, “Mary Ann Tierney did.”

“Really?” Smiling faintly, Sarah skipped a beat. “I thought I dragged her here.”

Perplexed, Gersten stared at her, unable to find an answer. Glancing at her watch, Sarah told him softly, “Make up your mind, Dr. Gersten. I’ll give you all the time you need.”

W
AITING IN
her office for Martin Tierney, Sarah treasured the silence, a few moments respite.

It was past nine o’clock; the corridors were empty, and the lights tracing the span of the Bay Bridge glowed against the inky darkness below. But, in late afternoon, when Sarah had returned, pickets from the Christian Commitment surrounded the building, and a hysterical woman had chained herself to a leg of the reception desk on one of Kenyon & Walker’s seven floors. John Nolan had hastily hired security guards for each floor; a few of the older male partners expressed their anger at Sarah by ignoring her.

On her desk were several stacks of letters—some admiring, many not, a few anti-Semitic or overtly threatening—and her voice mail was clogged with interview requests and hate-filled tirades. In a vain but kindly effort to buffer this assault, her secretary had left a favorable clipping from the
New York Times
in which legal experts, evaluating her trial skills, referred to her as a “twenty-nine-year-old legal superstar.”

She had become famous without noticing, Sarah supposed, because she had no time to notice. Nor did she have time now. A trial required tunnel vision: introspection was a waste of time at best, perilous at worse. She could not look past tomorrow.

Her telephone rang.

It was the security guard on the first floor. Martin Tierney was in the lobby.

Tierney scanned her office, noting the mail strewn across her desk with a look of bleak acknowledgment. “Have you been inundated, too?” Sarah asked.

“Of course.” He sat, his fine scholar’s face filled with sorrow. “I contemplate Patrick Leary, and I wonder whether he has any concept of the cruelty he’s perpetrating. Or even the capacity to imagine it.”

“Leary,” Sarah answered, “can’t see past the mirror. But he’s got no patent on cruelty.”

Tierney’s pale blue-gray eyes regarded her. “You want us to rest our case tomorrow.”

Sarah did not directly answer. “She’s over six months pregnant,” she told him. “This afternoon, I called Mark Flom. He’s afraid that the stress of a trial may cause Mary Ann to deliver prematurely. She’s trapped in the legal process like a prisoner while the whole country watches, waiting for Judge Leary—or you—to let her go—”

“You will
never
understand,” Tierney interrupted. “All three of us are prisoners in a death watch far more terrible than a vigil at an execution. Tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, Patrick Leary may sentence an innocent life to death. And
then you’ll
do your damnedest to make sure that sentence is carried out.

“You act as if we were being stubborn, as though our defense of life is optional, a matter of foolish pride.” Tierney’s
voice thickened with emotion. “I can see—I
can feel
—the price all of us are paying for it, and there’s no good ending. Only a choice, between the moral and the immoral, right and wrong.”

Against her will, Sarah acknowledged the immutability of his beliefs and the justice of his words—if this was murder, pure and simple, Martin Tierney was as entrapped as Mary Ann. “All the more reason,” Sarah answered, “not to testify tomorrow.”

Tierney folded his hands. “And end the defense of our grandson’s life with Dr. Gersten.”

“Gersten was a choice,” Sarah retorted. “I didn’t make you call him. Why should
Mary Ann
pay the price for
that?
”

Tierney did not flinch. “It was a mistake …”

“A
mistake?
” Sarah echoed. “Maybe for you. Maybe for your grandson. But not for Barry Saunders and his friends.

“This trial’s great for them—all the fundamentalists will be sending their grocery money to the Christian Commitment, to stop the kind of antifamily outrage inflicted on Mary Ann’s martyred parents.” Sarah’s voice rose. “Saunders sees this trial as a telethon: ‘Send your money to Barry’s kids.’”

To her surprise, Tierney expelled a short, bitter laugh, more eloquent than speech.

“The final boost for his ratings,” Sarah finished, “would be the aggrieved, pro-life parents testifying against their wayward daughter. You might take time out to wonder if Saunders suggested Gersten to force your hand.”

Tierney’s returning gaze betrayed, to Sarah, acknowledgment, resignation, and fatalism. “Whatever was meant,” he said, “it’s done.”

Watching him, Sarah felt despair. “Don’t testify, Martin. Please. Because if
Mary Ann
wants to win, you may force her to take the stand.”

Tierney could not be surprised. But pain showed through his self-control. “You’d put her on.”

“After
you’ve
testified she’s incapable of deciding for herself? She’ll demand it. I’m her lawyer; you may leave me with no choice.” Sarah’s voice remained quiet. “And if either of you testifies, I’ll go after you. You’ve thought about that, I’m sure—how I’ll do it, and what I know.”

Tierney stared at her. “You’re offering a deal. If we don’t testify, she won’t.”

“Yes. We both rest on what we have. Before all of us reach the point of no return.”

Tierney placed a finger to his lips, eyes downcast in thought. Sarah tried to imagine the personae warring within him: the protective father; the concerned husband; the moral philosopher bent on saving his grandson’s life; the litigator forced to calculate his chances. His conflict was as tangible to Sarah as the strength of his principles. “Margaret won’t testify,” he said at last. “But I will. In fact, I must.

“You think I’m speaking against my daughter. To me, it’s my last chance to speak
to
her, in the only place where she still listens.”

The sadness of this admission silenced Sarah, as did his concession of how much he had lost. But as it always seemed with Martin Tierney, nothing he did or said was simple—his choice of himself as witness over Margaret, Sarah knew, was also the calculated decision of a clever adversary. “What’s to keep me,” she retorted, “from calling Margaret as a hostile witness? If I were you, I’d worry for them both—your daughter
and
your wife.”

Tierney’s smile signaled his anger, tightly controlled. “I thought you might threaten that. Or even
do
it to divide us—as you’ve been hoping for all along.” He stood. “You talk of choices, Sarah.
That
choice is up to you, and to your conscience.”

Sarah rose as well. “I’m sorry,” she said. “More than you know.”

Tierney let the ambiguous remark linger for a moment, then nodded. “On some level, I suppose you are.”

Turning, he left her there.

T
AKING THE STAND
, Martin Tierney first looked toward his wife.

Despite her anger, the small moment made Sarah think of her parents. However deeply they loved her, there existed between them an understanding—built on years of compromise, a shared affection, a tolerance for the other’s weaknesses, secrets which Sarah could not know. Watching the Tierneys’ eyes meet, Sarah sensed their tangible connection, the fruits of twenty years. But Margaret’s reflexive glance toward Mary Ann was filled with apprehension.

The girl sat beside Sarah, taut and still. As Mary Ann looked at her father, Sarah read her loss of innocence. No longer could she feel that her parents’ love was unconditional: as she grew older, Mary Ann might appreciate their dilemma, but in her deepest heart, Sarah believed, she would always feel betrayed. As if seeing this, her father turned away.

Barry Saunders’s questioning began slowly, eliciting from Martin Tierney the dimensions of his faith.

“What are your beliefs,” Saunders asked, “regarding the death penalty?”

“I’m opposed to it,” Tierney answered. “I believe that life is granted by God, and that we have no right to take it.”

“And yet you served in Vietnam.”

“Yes. But as a medic, not a combatant.”

“And why was that?”

Tierney folded his hands. “I don’t object to all wars. But I certainly objected to that war. Becoming a medic gave me a chance to save lives, not take them.”

Tierney, Sarah thought, made no claims for himself beyond
that he had beliefs too deep to treat as a convenience. “And your wife shares these beliefs?” Saunders asked.

“Long before she met me.” Tierney gave his wife a fleeting smile. “Together, we were going to eradicate capital punishment. From the look of things, we’ve got a ways to go.”

The understatement carried a hint of irony and sadness: their ideals were at risk within their own family, and might fail even there. “And has Mary Ann,” Saunders asked, “also believed in the sanctity of life?”

“Always.” Tierney remained quiet, contained. “The idea of defenselessness, or that someone could take the life of another, seemed to touch her deeply.”

Silent, Mary Ann stared at the table, no more able to look at Martin Tierney than he could look at her. That cameras recorded this filled Sarah with disgust.

“When Mary Ann became pregnant,” Saunders inquired, “how did you react?”

“We felt many things.” Tierney narrowed his eyes in thought, as though straining to give an answer as complete as it was honest. “Angry and deluded, the reaction of parents when a child’s conduct shocks them. Resentful, as unready to be grandparents as Mary Ann was to be a mother. Above all, we felt deep worry for our daughter. She was just so terribly young.

“Mary Ann imagined a life partnership with the boy who was the father. All
we
wanted was for him to be decent to her, to treat her with compassion.” He paused, glancing at his wife, then added quietly, “So we went to talk to him, and to his parents.”

At this, Mary Ann looked up, as astonished as Sarah herself. “What did they say?” Saunders asked.

“The parents were as adamant as their son, and
he
wanted nothing to do with Mary Ann. We’ve allowed her to believe that we wanted to exclude him.” Hesitant, Tierney spoke more softly still. “In truth, he refused to see her. On any terms.”

Mary Ann went crimson with shock and humiliation, and then her eyes filmed over. Sarah stared at Tierney in outrage; still Tierney did not look at them.

“On the way home,” he finished, “we were overcome with regret. She’d gotten into something she didn’t understand—
for which, plainly, we had failed to prepare her. We simply could not bring ourselves to make that any worse by telling her.”

Perhaps, Sarah thought, this revelation was a perverse form of pleading, a father straining to tell his daughter how much he loved her; if so, its tacit cruelty betrayed how badly Tierney had lost his way. But Patrick Leary’s look of commiseration bespoke the sympathy of one father for another.

“Did she ever ask about abortion?” Saunders asked.

“Never,” Tierney answered. “Mary Ann may have fantasized about this boy. But she knew that her reasons for bearing this child were far more profound, and far less transitory. At no time did she question that.”

To Sarah, this had the ring of truth, though she believed that the reasons for Mary Ann’s silence were different from what Tierney proposed. “And how,” Saunders asked, “was that affected by the sonogram?”

“All of us were devastated.” Tierney’s pale eyes sought out his wife. “I found myself wondering if this was God’s way of sparing Mary Ann. But it was agony for her mother, and it has plainly spared our daughter nothing.”