Protect and Defend (32 page)

To Sarah, the skeptic, such pronouncements—serenely certain of the speaker’s intimate acquaintance with the Godhead—had a blissed-out, cultlike quality which shortcut the process of thought. But she had learned to accept that this reaction set her apart from countless others, whom she seldom encountered, and, perhaps, from Mary Ann, who listened with bowed head.

“What did your parents say?” Saunders was asking.

Marlene looked away. “I knew it would be hard on them, and I felt real bad about that. But they said that love is infinite—
that their hearts could expand to love my baby just like they did for me, their youngest child.
I
was a surprise, too.”

Sarah imagined the simple goodness embodied in those words—as well, perhaps, as a clue that Marlene Brown identified with her own unplanned child. “It’ll be all right,” she whispered to Mary Ann—as much for herself as for the girl.

“Did there come a time,” Saunders asked Marlene, “that you learned that there were problems with your unborn child?”

Marlene swallowed, as though the remembered moment were tangible and present. “The doctor told me he had water on the brain—hydrocephalus, they called it. All I knew was, on the sonogram, his head was way too big for his body.”

“Or
your
body?”

The witness nodded. “To have my baby, I’d have to have an operation.”

“A classical cesarean section?”

“Yes.” The witness glanced at Mary Ann. “Even if I did, they said my baby would most likely die—that the water would probably keep it from growing much of a brain.”

Saunders nodded in sympathy. “How far along were you?”

“Five months—maybe a little more.”

“Did your doctor say that having this baby might keep you from having any more?”

The witness paused, twisting her plastic watch. “He said he thought I’d come out fine, but there was always a small chance I wouldn’t.”

“What did you do?”

“I mean, my mom was there …” Marlene gave a shrug of helplessness; her face and body seemed to reflect whatever emotions she recalled. “For a long time we just cried. It was cold—Iowa’s
cold
in December—and a snowstorm had shut down my school. But when my mom called my dad, he left the factory and drove right home.” As though by reflex, Marlene turned to Martin Tierney. “They sat next to me, each holding my hand. Finally they both—really my mom, mostly—said that they didn’t like abortion, but didn’t want me hurt, either.”

“And so …” Saunders prompted.

“And so they said we should pray on it and consult as a family, and then they’d support whatever I decided to do.”

In the context she described—two pro-life parents, a vivid, personified Jesus who loved her unborn child—it was difficult for Sarah to imagine Marlene Brown terminating any pregnancy. “So you prayed?” Saunders asked.

“Yes. We kneeled down in a circle, held hands, and asked for guidance. And then we talked about what would happen if the baby came out wrong.”

“What did you decide?”

“That together we could bear it. Even if my baby would die soon, at least I could give him a chance.” The girl’s next words were quiet but affecting. “So we made a place in my room for Matthew, and waited for him to come.”

“When was he born?”

“In July.” The girl swallowed again. “They had to put a tube in his head.”

Turning, Saunders nodded to an associate who stood by the courtroom door. With a certain ceremony, the man opened it and a woman entered, holding a baby in her arms.

She walked between the rows of reporters, a good-natured-appearing woman in a navy blue pantsuit, with unnaturally brown hair coiled tight to her head. Startled, Sarah stood. Even without an explanation, Sarah knew she was the witness’s mother; though Marlene was only sixteen, she had the same profile as the older woman—a prominent nose and softening chin—and her appealing, limpid eyes watched the woman and child with adoration.

“Could we have a bench conference?” Sarah asked.

Leary was gazing upon the scene with a half-smile of bemusement. Distractedly, he said, “Approach the bench, counsel.”

As Tierney, Saunders, Fleming, and Sarah clustered before him, the woman paused in the well of the courtroom, and the infant emitted a brief squall. “This is a hearing,” Sarah told Leary in an angry undertone, “not a Christmas pageant, or show-and-tell. Or are we going to admit this baby into evidence?

“I’m perfectly willing to accept on faith the witness’s assertion that her child exists. It has no place in court …”

“
No
place,” Saunders said with genuine indignation. “We’ve seen sonograms of an engorged head and photographs of a ruptured uterus, but this beautiful child ‘has no place—’”

“All right,” Leary interrupted. “What’s your point?”

“That as the one who must choose between life and death, you—the entire country, in fact—ought to face him. Or how can we have the moral authority to decide the fate of
any
child?”

Looking toward the baby, Leary raised a hand, forestalling Sarah’s rebuttal. Perhaps, she thought bitterly, he had begun to perceive that, by admitting cameras to the courtroom, he had become an actor in a drama manipulated by others. “Miss Brown can identify the baby,” he told Saunders. “That should be enough to suit your purposes. We’re not equipped with a changing table.”

Saunders nodded his face a buttery mask of satisfaction. He had out-thought her, Sarah knew, and the next few minutes would be terrible. Returning to the plaintiff’s table, she saw Mary Ann, like everyone present, regarding the child with mixed tenderness and fascination. As Sarah sat, she touched Mary Ann’s hand.

But Mary Ann could not stop watching the baby; nor, it seemed, could the judge. Saunders beckoned the woman forward; in near silence, she crossed the courtroom, and placed the infant in its young mother’s arms.

Gently, Saunders asked, “Marlene, is this your son?”

The girl, so pitifully young in Sarah’s mind, gazed down at the small face peering back at her from beneath blue blankets. “This is Matthew.”

As if to affirm this, the baby raised one hand and made a tiny fist, an infant’s reflex. In the fond, protective voice of a church elder, Saunders asked, “And how old is he, Marlene?”

“Just seven months, tomorrow.”

“Is he crawling yet?”

With a mother’s smile, Marlene kept watching his face. “Trying to. He can get up on his knees now.”

“What else does he do?”

Mary Ann’s eyes grew wide and receptive. “Oh, lots of things,” she answered. “He touches the mobile in his crib, and smiles when I sing to him. His eyes are always following our cat around, like Buster’s the most fun thing he’s ever seen.”

At least until I throw up, Sarah thought. But she knew all too well how effective this was; despite her defenses, she felt the shafts of doubt. Mary Ann seemed to fight back tears;
Sarah wondered if Saunders’s—and the Tierneys’—true intention was to convince Mary Ann to withdraw her suit.

Perhaps mercifully, Matthew Brown resumed squalling. Smiling, Leary said to Saunders, “Perhaps you should find Matthew a bottle, Mr. Saunders. I think he’s had his fill of us.”

Smiling as well, Saunders signaled the older woman to come forward. With the competence of long experience, she took the baby from her daughter, nestling him against her shoulder. Matthew’s outcries stopped.

Silent, Saunders let the scene speak for him: two generations, filled with love, united to preserve a third. Glancing at Margaret Tierney, Sarah felt her own sense of pageantry increasing; Mary Ann’s mother looked as rapt as a communicant at Easter—at least as far as Sarah could imagine this. When at last the older woman carried Matthew from the courtroom, a stately procession through the smiling, curious media, Sarah felt a profound relief at his disappearance.

“No further questions,” Saunders said, and then Mary Ann began to cry.

I
NSTEAD OF
preparing her cross-examination, Sarah spent most of the break in the rest room, consoling Mary Ann.

Weeping, the girl bent over the porcelain sink. “It’s like they’re saying I’d have killed that baby …”

Yes, Sarah thought, and on television. She did not know who she held more responsible—the Tierneys, the Christian Commitment, Leary, or the media. All that Sarah could do was to make Mary Ann Tierney, the public figure, as sympathetic as she could.

“After I’m finished,” Sarah assured her, “people will
understand.” And then she carried the burden of this promise to the courtroom.

Her task was delicate. Marlene Brown seemed guileless, a pawn of forces who might use her, but could never make this girl as crafty, or relentless, as they were. Yet the opportunity this created mirrored its challenges—neither could Sarah appear crafty or relentless. As Sarah approached, Marlene watched her with an expectant sweetness.

Quietly, Sarah said, “Your parents didn’t
make
you have Matthew, I guess.”

Marlene shook her head vigorously. “Oh, no. We decided as a family.”

“And if you’d decided not to take the chance, would your parents have supported you?”

Idly, the witness played with a strand of hair, frowning in thought. “It’s so hard, now, to imagine life without him …”

“But they said you could decide.”

Silence, then a quick bob of the head. “Yes, ma’am.”

This term of deference made Sarah smile. “You must feel lucky to have the parents you do.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then you’ve probably noticed that other girls at school aren’t so fortunate.”

The thought brought sadness to Marlene’s open face. In a softer voice, she said, “I surely have.”

“Within families, what kind of problems do you hear about?”

Barry Saunders was restive now, Sarah noticed. “Drinking, mostly.” The girl’s voice sharpened with disapproval. “My friend’s father beat her, and she had to run away …”

She stopped abruptly, remembering her audience; in the global village, let alone a small town in Iowa, her words would spread quickly. Sarah did not press the point.

“When you first thought you were pregnant, Marlene, why did you talk to your mom?”

The girl bit her lip. “‘Cause she
is
my mom. I mean, it was bad, but …”

“You didn’t talk to her because Iowa state law required a parent to consent to an abortion?”

For the first time, the girl looked puzzled and defensive;
the question seemed beyond her ken. “I didn’t know about any law. I talked to my parents because I wanted to.”

“And you decided to have Matthew because you wanted to.”

“Yes. Definitely.” She paused, then added, “And because I believed Jesus, my personal savior, would want me to.”

Do you know what He wants for Mary Ann Tierney?
Sarah considered asking. But the question was too loaded. Vigilant, Barry Saunders sat forward on the edge of his chair, while Martin Tierney watched Sarah with a cool, knowing expression. “So,” she continued, “Matthew was delivered by cesarean section.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you know what effect, if any, that will have on your ability to have more children?”

The witness shook her head. “I can’t know, yet.”

“Would you like to have more children?”

“Some day, when I’m married.” For an instant, Marlene looked perturbed, then her face cleared of doubt. “I put myself in the Lord’s hands. To give me Matthew was His will, and so’s whether I have more babies.”

Sarah paused, then decided to take a chance. “I guess Matthew must seem almost like a miracle.”

Once more, Barry Saunders stirred. But, Sarah knew, for him to challenge the implications of
this
miracle would unsettle his own witness. “Yes, ma’am,” Marlene answered. “They said most babies like that don’t make it.”

Briefly looking down, Sarah tried to conceal her satisfaction. “So once again,” she said kindly, “you were lucky.”

“Not just lucky.” The girl’s voice swelled with gratitude. “It’s like of all the babies in the world, God placed His healing hand on Matthew.”

Sarah was not so sure of this. She had studied the case, and consulted with Dr. Mark Flom; there was considerable doubt about the range of Matthew’s cognitive capacities, or his long-term prognosis. But there was no percentage in parsing miracles, or suggesting to Marlene Brown that her son’s might be cruelly finite. It would be enough to ask this girl to step outside her blissful world, and imagine Mary Ann’s.

“Would you want Mary Ann Tierney,” Sarah asked, “to have a son like Matthew?”

Briefly, the girl looked at Mary Ann. “Oh, yes,” she said with fervor. “I surely would.”

“I guess you know he’ll be born hydrocephalic. So for her son to be like Matthew, and have a brain—that would take another miracle, wouldn’t it?”

A shadow seemed to cross Marlene’s face. Saunders began to stand, then thought better of it; with a certain bitter amusement, Sarah reflected that he was trapped in his own pageant. “Yes, ma’am,” Marlene answered slowly. “I guess it would.”

“What if her baby weren’t like Matthew, but died, as the doctors expected your son to, and as most such babies do. Would you want her to have another?”

“Yes. Of course I would.”

Sarah tilted her head. “What if she couldn’t, because of the baby who died? What would you say to her then?”

“It would be hard.” The girl tried to imagine this, then said more firmly, “I’d tell her it was God’s will, to place her faith in Him.”

Sarah paused a moment. “Suppose that had happened to you—that Matthew had died, and you could never have more children. What would you believe then?”

“Your Honor.” Rising, Saunders spoke slowly. “Ms. Dash is free to ask Marlene anything about her own experience. But how can she answer about experiences she’s never had?”

“Precisely,” Sarah told Leary. “I respect Miss Brown’s experience. I’m merely testing its limits, and its application to Mary Ann Tierney.”

For a moment, Leary looked bewildered, unsure of where Sarah was going. Seemingly as much from embarrassment as insight, the judge said, “You may answer, Marlene.”

The girl folded her hands, eyes downcast in contemplation. “I’d believe it was God’s will,” she said softly. “That I shouldn’t question His decision for me. Or Matthew.”