The Sabbathday River (31 page)

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Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz

BOOK: The Sabbathday River
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Polly broke her last cracker into crumbs and brushed them along the table.
“I'm sorry,” said Judith.
They sat in silence for a moment.
“Naomi,” Judith said, “I want you to come with me when I see Charter.”
She looked up, alarmed. “But why?”
“Well, you're as close to a next of kin as Heather's got. And if you bring Polly it might help to give him a little kick, you know? Get him to hustle things along so this mother can get back to her baby. Plus, you've met him, and you're the one who told him in the first place he was barking up the wrong tree. It might guilt-trip him a bit, you know?”
“It might make him more determined not to be wrong.”
“But he is wrong.” Judith smiled. “He can't change that, and neither can we. We'll appeal to his sense of fairness. You know—win some, lose some, in spite of the best intentions. We'll say we respect his determination to bring the person responsible for the first baby to justice, and the sooner we get this Heather business out of the way, the faster we can get on with that. Also,” she paused, “I want him to see that there's support for Heather among women. And if he tries to drag this on, he's going to have to deal with that, too.”
Naomi couldn't stop herself from laughing. “Support from women!” she cried. “Oh, Judith, dream on. You live in New Hampshire now.
They won't see that this has anything to do with women. ‘Feminist' and ‘Communist' mean the same thing here. It just won't happen.”
“It might,” Judith said. “You never know. When they see how she got railroaded they'll put themselves in her place. They'll think, Well, I might have cracked under those circumstances, too.” She considered. “Naomi, I really feel they'll forgive her. I have that faith, you know?”
Naomi frowned and slowly shook her head. “Not her, not us. Not anyone who touches this.” She looked at her friend. “Look, I'm a lost cause here. I've done too many things already, but you should be clear about what will happen. She may be innocent, but they still won't applaud you for getting her off. They'll just be irritated that someone prevented Heather from getting what was coming to her.”
“And that is?” Judith said archly.
“Well, losing her child for a start. A woman like that should hardly be a mother, after all. And jail time, too.”
“But why?” Judith cried. “What's the point of that?”
“No point. Just that people have been working up to this for so long, and now, just on the verge of all of their general dislike being spectacularly justified, it'd be anticlimactic to have to back down.” She paused, stirring the cold tea in her cup. “There's a line from
Anna Karenina
I always remembered: ‘They were already preparing the lumps of mud they would fling when the time came.'” She smiled sadly. “It's been like that.”
“You can't be sure,” said Judith.
But she could, and Naomi was tempted to say it, citing her tenure as resident alien in Peyton County. There would be blame in abundance, as she knew perfectly well, and neither she nor Judith, nor anyone who took Heather's part, would be forgiven for it. But had she been Judith, Naomi thought afterward, she wouldn't have wanted to hear it either, so Naomi shrugged and said no, of course she couldn't be sure, and naturally anything could happen when people understood how badly used Heather had been. Then she agreed to go see Charter, and they talked no more about it.
A Woman to Blame
THE OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY TOOK UP a sizable section of a gray granite building adjacent to the Peytonville courthouse. This charmless display of local stone and unoriginal design had been solemnly composed and dedicated in the 1960s, and though the building had been outgrown many times over, and the overflow of victims' services and parole and child welfare had been shunted off to even less lovely buildings on the outskirts of Peytonville (with—it seemed, nonetheless—tittle impact on the general crowding inside), the district attorney had always held on to the same suite of offices in the building's back corner. There was a small park outside the entrance, and Naomi and Polly waited there for Judith to arrive for their meeting with Charter.
The little girl's parka from the previous winter did not fit, so they had stopped in the Peytonville Wal-Mart to buy a new one, and the significance of this—of her first purchase for Polly, the first expression of her own preference for how Polly should live—had not escaped Naomi. She watched with barely tempered satisfaction as Polly ran around and
around the small garden, circling a dying floral display and chirping her new word in melodic sequence: “Go, go, go!”
Even more than Polly, Naomi wanted to go, but Judith had called again the night before, reminding her of the appointment with a very pointed tone. She was only just beginning to feel ready to go out at all—apart from the drive to pick up Polly, she had not even been to the supermarket since finding the second baby—and an interview with Charter did not promise a gentle reintroduction to human society. She was doubtful, too, of what good her being here could possibly do. Charter disliked her—she brought him dead babies to contend with, for one thing—and had as much as accused her of infanticide the very first time they'd met. These things did not augur well for restrained, productive interchange, and Naomi only hoped that her own undisguisable resentment would not do Heather more harm than good.
Judith arrived, dressed beautifully in a brown suit, swinging her briefcase. Naomi marveled, watching her come up the walk, barely recognizing the woman in Reminiscence overalls she'd first seen in the produce section. Her hair was shorter, her figure professionally trim. She was full of respect for how capable Judith must be, to appear so competent with such apparent effortlessness. If she herself had ever gone to law school, Naomi thought, it was this polish that would have eluded her, far more than any intellectual shortcoming. She simply could not project herself into a picture of appropriate attire and behavior, of well-tended hair and simple, understated clothing, of pantyhose and unobtrusive jewelry. How lousy to be defeated by such irrelevancies! she thought, surveying her own disorder. Polly squatted down and threw a fistful of white pebbles into the air.
“Whoa!” Judith laughed, dodging the spray. “Okay, we're late.”
She slowed but didn't stop. Naomi swung Polly up onto her hip and jogged after.
“Still think this is a good idea?” she asked.
“I do. I'll do the talking.” She looked at her watch. “You just look at him. Don't say anything. Though if I give you a meaningful stare, you can consider yourself unmuzzled.”
“Unmuzzled?” Naomi said. “This because he already thinks of me as a bitch?”
“Ha, ha,” Judith said flatly. “Come on, it's over here.”
The door at the end of the hall was open, and through it they could
see Charter standing behind his desk and leaning over, dialing a number on his desk phone. In this posture, the ripple of his combed-over hair was presented flat, like the drawn-on ocean waves a child might make. He wore, Naomi thought, the only gray suit she had ever seen him wear, or perhaps he had a closetful and rotated them. His right hand, with its chunky class ring, drummed the tabletop.
“Hello,” said Judith brightly. “We're here for our ten o'clock.”
Charter looked up and frowned. Then he looked regretfully at the phone and hung up.
“Welcome, Mrs. Friedman. Mrs. Roth.”
Ye Daughters of B‘nai B'rith
, Naomi thought obnoxiously.
They went in. Charter's eyes went right to Polly, who looked calmly back.
She pointed at him. “Mama.”
Everyone tensed. Naomi put her down on the floor and fished the magic blue elephant out of the diaper bag.
“Is this necessary?” Charter said tersely. “I hardly think it's appropriate to bring a child here.”
“This is Heather Pratt's child,” Judith said, her voice calm.
“I'm well aware of that, Mrs. Friedman. But how that has bearing on her being here I can't imagine.”
“Well”—Judith smiled—“I certainly don't want to inconvenience you. Let's just get this sorted through quickly, and then we can leave you in peace.”
He took his seat. “I'm not sure what we can sort through in such a short amount of time,” he said. “You asked for the meeting, so why don't you let me know what you have on your mind?”
Momentarily silenced, Judith rallied. “Well, why not begin with the second baby. What's the status there?”
“Deceased,” he said bluntly. “Next?”
“Mr. Charter,” she said carefully, “I don't think that's helpful.”
“The second baby is still being examined by the coroner. Time of death can only approximately be determined, but he feels he can narrow it down to the period two days before to one day after Mrs. Roth found the first baby. Naturally, that includes a date and time of birth identical to that of the first baby.”
Naomi, who didn't exactly understand this, but didn't like it anyway, frowned at him.
“So it's clear to everyone that this second baby was indeed Heather's baby.”
“Nothing is clear to me, Mrs. Friedman. We will continue to investigate.”
“But it's obvious that this is the baby Heather admitted to bearing. This is the baby whose body she admitted putting into the pond on her own property.”
“That may be,” he said, pursing his lips. “Or not.”
For a moment, there was silence. Judith, Naomi saw plainly, wasn't happy about how this was going.
“Mr. Charter,” she said suddenly, “I hope you're not planning to file criminal charges against Heather in connection with this second baby. This is a case of a tragic stillbirth, clearly.”
“That is certainly possible,” he said sagely.
“I feel I should tell you that pursuing criminal charges against a grieving mother can hardly enhance your public profile.”
He glared at her. “I thank you for your concern about my public profile, Mrs. Friedman, and ask you not to trouble yourself about it any longer. I will file charges against people I suspect of committing crimes, which, along with proving those charges, is my job. After that, it will be up to a jury.”
Naomi couldn't hold herself in check any longer. “I don't believe I'm hearing this,” she said. “She
told
you what happened to her baby. I mean, Jesus, what crime do you think you can prove Heather committed?”
He looked at them both. He seemed to find this moment pleasant.
“Murder, Mrs. Roth. I think she committed murder.”
Naomi stared at him, then at Judith, who was also speechless.
“You've got to be kidding,” she yelled. “Have you been keeping up on current events, Mr. Charter? That wasn't Heather's baby in the river. We don't have any idea whose baby it was! And just because you wasted your whole investigation making up your mind it was the wrong person, and just because you didn't have the decency to listen to Heather when she told you you were wrong, that doesn't mean you get to go after her. It's your assumptions that turned out to be wrong!”
“I did make assumptions,” he admitted, examining his fingers. “But given the information I had at the time, I made appropriate ones.”
“And what assumptions,” Judith said tightly, “were those?”
He swayed his head back and forth for a moment, as if considering. Then he looked at Judith again. “I assumed,” Charter announced, “that she had had only one baby.”
Naomi, who dimly sensed Polly playing with the laces of her hiking boot, felt energy drain from her. Beside her, Judith, too, was having difficulty recovering.
“This is,” she managed. “The most. Outrageous.” Then she gave up.
“I wish I could agree,” he said, triumphant but serious. “But you see, Heather in effect admitted both acts to us—the act of stabbing the first baby and the act of giving birth to the second, and disposing of its body. We expect, moreover, that when we complete forensic tests we'll have independent evidence for each of the acts. And please don't forget, Mrs. Friedman, that Heather Pratt was the
only
woman we ever discovered, within at least a sixty-mile radius of Goddard, who had recently had a questionable pregnancy.” He looked from one to another. “By which I mean a pregnancy that did not result in a recorded birth—live or dead.”
Naomi found her voice. “Impossible. She would have been huge if she was carrying twins.”
“Not necessarily. The doctor who examined her says it depends entirely on the position of the fetuses. And please remember that, by her own admission, she stayed close to her home over the summer months and wore loose clothes.”
“So … what? She had two babies, stabbed one and threw it in the river, then put the other in the pond? Jesus,
that
makes sense!” She was shaking. She looked to Judith for help, but Judith was very still.
“I don't expect it to make sense, Mrs. Roth. In fact, I doubt it ever will.” He frowned at his hands, splaying the short fingers. “Not only that, I want you both to know that I don't consider myself responsible for conferring justice on Heather. It isn't my place to punish this woman.
“How noble!” Naomi cried, lifting Polly onto her lap. “As if you weren't punishing her right now. What about her
daughter
, Mr. Charter? Every day this drags on is a day Polly is prevented from being with her mother, where she belongs. Granted, she's young, and she doesn't understand the niceties of what's going on, but I can assure you she knows something's wrong. How is this fair to her?”
“It may not be fair.” His voice was even. “But it may well be appropriate. It may be that Heather is by no means a fit parent and ought not to be raising a child, particularly on her own.”
Naomi looked at him, blank with rage. For the first time in her life, she stifled an impulse for violence.
“This is absolutely reprehensible,” she managed, finally.
To which he smiled, a little sadly. “Forgive me if I suggest that a woman who kills babies is an unfit mother.”
“All Heather did was maybe not get prenatal care for her pregnancy,” Naomi said bitterly. “She had no obligation to tell anybody she was pregnant. Not even the father, for Christ's sake! And certainly not you. Then she had a stillbirth. That was
hardly
her fault! She doesn't deserve to be locked up for either of those things. And the other stuff is crazy! You're just
doing
it to cover up your own mistakes.”
“My mistakes,” he said blandly.
“Well,” Judith broke in, her voice amazingly calm, “there is the small matter of this graphic confession to a crime my client absolutely did not commit. It seems to me that all this nonsense about twins is a very elaborate way to deflect questions about that confession. But I won't be deflected, Mr. Charter. I think you know that.”
“The confession was entirely proper, Mrs. Friedman. And it was witnessed, as you know.”
“My client tells me she asked to see a lawyer. More than once.”
“I have no recollection of that,” he said.
“She also, as I understand it, offered to take you—even
begged
to take you—out to her house and show you where she'd hidden the body of her stillborn infant. A plea you ignored, according to her. I wonder why.”

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