The Sabbathday River (56 page)

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Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz

BOOK: The Sabbathday River
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This bleak statement Charter shrewdly gave a moment to sink in.
Methodology differed for women who kill and for men who kill, Staple noted. Mothers tend to be less violent—suffocation and drowning are the preponderant techniques. Fathers generally maim.
“So her suffocation of the pond baby in particular would be in keeping with the majority of mothers who kill their newborns?”
“Yes. She fits right into the profile.”
“And the stab wound to the other baby?”
“Less familiar, but very conceivably the act of a psychopathic person.”
Charter nodded, as if he were hearing this for the first time. “Dr. Staple, do you understand why Heather should have admitted having one baby but withheld the information that she had actually given birth to twins?”
“I think I can,” Staple said, shifting in her seat. “It's possible that, having murdered one infant, she considered that her crime against the second might possibly be seen as ‘not counting,' particularly since the second infant had not been discovered.”
“In other words, she could get two murders for the price of one confession?”
And this, as luck would have it, was the very moment Heather Pratt passed out.
Just Like the Sixties
IN THE END, IT WAS JUDITH WHO SEEMED TO SUFFER most. Judith, who checked her watch with increasing anxiety as the next hour slid by, as the doctor was called, as Heather slumped against the wall of the room they took her to, as the minutes passed and the chance of dispatching Charter's psychiatrist before the day was out grew more and more remote. Across the square her own witness languished in the diner, reading the newspaper (his meter running at the rate of one hundred dollars an hour) as he waited to be called. This man, an expert on false confessions, had driven up from Boston “just in case,” at her request, and now he sat, eyeing the crush of press around the courthouse as they milled tensely about, knowing what was going on inside but unable to find anything to film or anyone to talk to who knew more than they.
Naomi waited in her seat in the courtroom, through the recess that was never officially called. She wished she had the authority to go back to where Heather was, but Judith had taken off without a backward glance, trailing her client's limp frame as the court officer scooped it
and ran. Past her, through the milling, chattering crowd, came a doctor, flushed, with a proper medical bag, and as he passed her and rushed through the small door behind the bench, she thought, At least, at last, someone is going to look at Heather and see that she isn't all right, and try, honestly, to make her better. Someone with normal diagnostic tools and without an agenda will put a stethoscope to her chest and a finger to her radial, and ask her kindly where it hurts and whether anything can be done to relieve her suffering. In her seat across the room, Ann Chase reached into her bag and withdrew a lap-sized measure of monk's cloth, which she began, incredibly, to hook with some garishly bright acrylic fabric.
A fuck you,
Naomi knew, to herself. She shook her head and stared plaintively at the door.
In time, Judith returned, looking cross. She came and sat by Naomi and put her head close. “She's
fine,”
she said preemptively.
“Oh, good.”
“She fainted. What do you expect? She's been living on a cup of tea a day or something ridiculous like that. But when she came to, she started crying. She said she couldn't come back.”
Naomi shook her head.
“If she knew what this is going to cost her she'd make an effort,” Judith went on, her voice chilly. “Because this is it now. For the weekend. The last thing the jury got to see was this shrink calling her a manipulative psychopath, and then her fainting.” She shook her head. “All my work. And of course Charter's just beside himself. He thinks I put her up to this so I could get a new trial later. He thinks this is how we try cases in New York, by manipulating the process.”
Naomi clucked in sympathy, but Judith fumed on.
“So naturally there's no way we're going to get to my guy this afternoon. I called over to him at the diner. He's gone back already.”
“Oh, I'm sorry.”
She shrugged. “Well, if she wants to play Camille, that's what happens.”
“But, Judith,” Naomi said pleadingly, “you know she didn't do this on purpose. She just couldn't take any more. I mean, this girl's been drawn, quartered, dissected, and biopsied. There are people reading about her menstrual cycle over their morning coffee. I'd probably faint if it were me.”
Judith looked sourly at the door, then exhaled in a rush.
“What did the doctor give her?”
“Valium. I could use some myself. She started screaming when I suggested we resume testimony.”
Naomi, who hardly blamed her for that, kept her tongue.
“So that's it. Recess till Wednesday. No.” She smiled for the first time since returning to the courtroom. “I don't think our Judge Hayes is taking Passover off. He's got a conference in New Haven. He warned us at the outset.”
“Well, maybe it's for the best,” Naomi thought aloud. “Give everybody a break. And you can concentrate on your haroseth.”
“Breaks are only a good thing if you're screwing up,” Judith said, ignoring the levity. “I really had some momentum going.”
“You were doing great,” Naomi confirmed.
“And Heather made her histrionic gesture right on cue! Shit, you call her a master manipulator, and presto! She manipulates.”
“Come on,” Naomi said. She helped Judith with her things. As they drew nearer the door, the din came up, of its own accord, a chatter and then a roar. “What are you going to tell them?” Naomi said.
“Them.”
Judith looked tired. “Oh, fuck them.” But Naomi saw that she was already thinking, turning it as best she could to Heather's advantage. They pushed out the door, walking into Charter's television backdrop. There was, as they took their first steps down the granite staircase, a collective gasp. Naomi looked at Sarah Copley, who was suddenly beside her.
“Can you believe he just said that?”
“What did he say?” Naomi said. She had to raise her voice.
“He said he was going to request that Heather have a pregnancy test. He said his office would want to be reassured that she wasn't pregnant, and that's why she fainted!”
From behind her, she heard Judith: “What a
shmuck
!”
“Do you have evidence that she's pregnant?” somebody shouted.
“Who's the father?”
“Has Ashley been to visit her in jail?”
They were swarming, like girls on a hockey field with their sticks flying and their heads down. It took a moment for somebody to identify Judith. One microphone was pressed into her face, then another, then a thornbush of electronics.
“Is your client pregnant?” a woman said. She was, Naomi thought,
so perfectly, blankly, and unremarkably pretty that she must represent some major television market.
“Of course she isn't pregnant,” Judith said with controlled rage. “The suggestion that she is pregnant is absurd, as Mr. Charter knows perfectly well. This is a blatant effort to gain in shock value what he is losing inside the courtroom, and I think it's appalling. My client has endured a week of having her character dissected by people who have never met her, and listening to the love of her life explain to the world that he only wanted her for sex, all because she had a stillborn baby and was too confused and bereft to notify what Mr. Charter considers the proper authorities. Frankly, I'm amazed Heather lasted as long as she did. I don't think I would have the strength of character to sit there while absolute strangers talk about me.”
“Why did she faint if she isn't pregnant?” a man shouted. Judith gave him a look.
“She's barely eaten for a week. She misses her little girl, who she hasn't seen out of a jail cell in five months. Her heart is broken because of Ashley Deacon's testimony. She still loves him very much. All she wants is for this nightmare to be over so she can go back to her daughter and be the good mother that
everyone
in this trial, on
both
sides, has testified she is. I wish District Attorney Charter and Attorney General Warren would see that this has all been a terrible mistake, that they identified the wrong woman as the mother of the Sabbathday River baby, and that in the process they are ruining the life of an innocent girl. Once again I call on these two men to reconsider the charges against Heather. I hope they will have the bravery, and the decency, and the
honor
to do so.”
There were more questions, but there were no more answers. Judith shook her head, reached up in a single, giveaway gesture to comb one curl behind her right ear, then took Naomi's elbow and pulled it after her down the steps. “You were … That was great,” Naomi said, stumbling on in her wake. Judith, without turning her head, shrugged.
“C'mon, get me out of here.”
They bucked a tide of white as women climbed the stairs. There were so many, Naomi thought. Even since lunchtime. Where had they all come from? Surely not Dartmouth—they were thick in the middle and gray, but also young, with cropped hair and long braids, in blue jeans and caftans and sweat suits. They looked like the followers of one of
those color-coded swamis, and Ella led them up the steps, clutching her white microphone and a fistful of white blooms. Naomi, helpless, tugged Judith's hand, and they turned to watch.
She was in her element, Ella was. Flushed and alive, her brief hair almost architectural in its precision. Only her hands, chapped red in the March wind, gave away any frailty as she lifted the microphone and called to her the faithful. “We invite all women who are outraged by Heather Pratt's ordeal to come here to Peytonville and make their voices heard. Women who cannot travel to the trial have already begun to show their support for Heather by sending her a single white rose,” and she lifted hers to the sky, “the same symbol of resistance against oppression that Sophie Scholl and her “White Rose” comrades adopted in their courageous stand against the Third Reich. The woman on trial in this parody of justice happens to be Heather Pratt, but she could be any of us. Remember that, and be thankful it isn't you having
your
sexual history and
your
physical attributes discussed by these so-called experts.” Ella adjusted her microphone, signaling a crescendo, and indeed, she jacked up her voice to a scream rendered downright painful by the further amplification of the loudspeaker:
“Women demand freedom for Heather Pratt, who has committed no crime! We demand the identification and interrogation of her male oppressors! We demand the restoration of her child! We demand that no other woman should ever be forced to endure what she has endured! We demand the end to this patriarchal repression of women's sexuality! We demand an end to this attempted annihilation of female power!”
“Ain't it just like the sixties,” Judith said in Naomi's ear in a strained, flat tone. Naomi thought for a moment that she must have meant this to be funny, but hadn't, after all, been able to muster the humor. Indeed, she held Naomi's elbow in a frantic grip, as if, without it, she might altogether sink from sight.
Some Lives Won't Blend
IN HER FIRST MATERNAL SHORTCUT SHE HAD taken to giving Polly those freeze-dried noodle soups from Japan, where the ratio of noodle to actual soup is so utterly stacked that you don't really need a spoon at all. Just as well, Naomi thought, since she barely had energy to make the long trip into the next room. Polly adored the noodles. She sat delightedly making them wiggle through her fingers on the white plastic tray of her high chair and flinging them like rubber bands at the dining-room table, where Naomi, too, was attempting dinner.
But she had even less appetite than energy. It amazed her how swept away she felt, dragged on and under by the crowds of shouting women, the infamy of Charter and his experts, even the tug at her elbow as Judith forged her own indecipherable path through this madness. And to what possible future? The woman she herself had been, a woman living alone in a leaky little house, selling useless objects over the phone by day and then coming home at night vaguely bitter at something she could neither isolate nor name, that woman was gone. Just as she'd
known it would happen on the first day, at that first moment on the riverbank. Gone, and only this suspension to replace it. Naomi's future was one week long, after all, and no longer. In only one week's time, the trial would end, and Polly must either return to her mother and whatever life Heather could provide or stay with Naomi in the ongoing tentativeness of their unnamed relationship. And when she thought of this, she was infused with rage. And when she knew it was rage, she understood how badly she needed a plan of her own.
She pulled Polly out of her high chair, the little girl dangling noodles. She was still hungry, so Naomi carried her to the kitchen and spooned her a few mouthfuls of yogurt right out of the cup; then she went to run a bath. Outside, it was inky dark: moonless and windless, the only sound the sucking of mud and the brook running its continuous loop of chatter. She peeled off Polly's clothes and removed her diaper, then helped her scramble in. She had a pink sand bucket and a shovel, which she used to consolidate the froth of her bubble bath, and this proved so distracting that Naomi was able to sneak a shampoo into the event—a rare occurrence. She was just combing through the detangler when she heard the car.
Instantly, Naomi went stiff with fear. No one was expected, of course. It was not possible that she had made some arrangement tonight and then forgotten. In fact, no one came over at all but Judith, and Naomi knew Judith would not come without calling, especially since she had been so exhausted only two hours earlier. Naomi's steep drive, moreover, was not the sort of place drivers chose to turn around in. There was no benevolent outcome she could conjure now, crouched by the bathtub, the comb suspended over Polly's bobbing head. This was a bad thing, like that thing from
Macbeth, Something wicked this way comes,
or the 4 a.m. phone call that cannot possibly be from somebody wanting to say hi, or the approaching stranger at the end of “The Monkey's Paw.” She thought—inevitably—of Ann, rigged up with another posse of the righteous, ready to circle her sorry house with a line of fire. She thought of Sue Deacon, itching for another fight. Or any of the others—those authors of her hate mail, those breathy admirers on her answering machine, who might have decided it was time to meet, in person. The car sounds ground down the muddy drive.
Naomi scooped Polly up in a towel, grabbed her bucket of thinning bubbles, and set her on the kitchen floor. She picked up the phone and
dialed the Goddard police, then, while it was ringing, withdrew the largest knife from her knife block and gripped it in a damp hand.
“Goddard police. Is this an emergency?”
“I don't know.” Naomi's voice came out soft. “There's somebody at my house.”
“Ma'am?”
The car door slapped shut. The squash of mud under heavy feet.
“Somebody's at my door,” Naomi insisted. “Listen, will you just stay on the line for a minute? I'm—”
Then a knock.
“Who's at your door?” the voice on the other end of the line said.
“Hold on. Stay on the line. I'm going to see.”
She put it down on the counter. Normal, normal. She held the knife behind her and walked toward the door. “Naomi?” a voice said, clear through Daniel's cheap pine.
She stopped in amazement.
“Can I speak to you, please?”
“Wait,” she said. “Wait one minute.”
Naomi went back to the telephone. “I'm sorry. It's a false alarm.”
“Nobody there?” the voice said.
“That's right. Thank you for your time.”
“Not at all.” The man hung up. Naomi went to the door.
He was not wearing his uniform. He stood on the porch in corduroys, a big gray sweater with a raveled collar, and heavy boots.
“I just called you,” Naomi said. She smiled a bit, since that struck her as funny.
“You called me?” Nelson said. “But why?”
“Because there was some unknown person coming down my drive. I got scared. So I called the police.”
“And here I am. Who says we're slow on the uptake?” He gazed past her at Polly, on the floor. “Why is your car parked up at the road?”
“The mud. I'm scared of not being able to get it up the hill till summer. My ex-husband didn't exactly grade it properly.”
“No,” Nelson said. He frowned then. “When you talked to them just now, did you say it was me?”
“No. I said no one was here, after all.”
He nodded, biting his lower lip. “That's good.” He saw the knife she still held. “I don't think you're going to need that on me.”
Naomi looked down. “No. Sorry.”
“You really were scared.”
“I've been getting calls. Judith has, too.”
Nelson sighed. “Naomi, I need to speak with you. May I speak with you?”
And there it was: that flash of before. The chill blue of his eyes, and the withered places beneath them, that she had loved. The skin through his thin hair.
“Of course you can,” Naomi said. She went back to get Polly, who held up her arms, shivering. “I need to get Polly ready for bed. You come, too.”
He followed her. They went into Polly's little room, and he stood in the doorway watching her as she put on a new diaper and Polly's footed pajamas and finished combing her wet hair. She filled a spouted cup with water and placed it in a holder over the rim of the crib. Polly chose a book and Naomi read it to her, hearing as if from some distance the high, slightly disingenuous musicality of her voice as the little story—a small bird, ironically, in search of its mother—came around to its end. She did not want to sing Polly her lullaby, because she was embarrassed in front of Nelson, but Polly would not be left alone without it, so Naomi leaned close and crooned:
Now I'm glad to be a woman, glad to be alive, glad for the children to take my place, glad for the will to survive …
Polly looked up at the doorway, her face blank but her eyes large and hard. Then she let Naomi cover her and watched them without protest as they left her to sleep.
“You're good at this,” he said. His voice was quiet.
Naomi shrugged. “I don't know. She's pretty easy.”
“The way you talk to her. You're good at it.”
“Thanks.”
“I always thought she was a strange child,” Nelson said. They were in the kitchen. “A little strange. The way she stared.”
“She's very contemplative. She takes things in, that's all.”
“She makes me uncomfortable, to tell you the truth.” He looked at Naomi, reddening a bit.
“Well, Nelson, you came into her house and took her mother away. What do you expect?”
His eyes widened. “You think she remembers that?”
“Remembers? Well”—Naomi put Polly's dish in the sink—“probably not the way we remember things. You know, not sequentially. But it must have been a big event for her.”
“Yes,” he agreed. He was frowning again. “God, I wish it hadn't happened. You couldn't guess how terrible …” He petered out.
“
Please
don't compare your suffering to Heather's. Or Polly's. Or mine, for that matter,” Naomi said dismissively. “Just don't do that.”
“I won't.” He shook his head. “I won't.” He seemed to be considering what he would say next. She decided to help him along.
“So why are you here, Nelson? What am I supposed to do, forgive you?”
He looked up at her, momentarily taken aback. “No, not at all. You're just supposed to listen to me. There are things I need to tell you.” Nelson stopped. “You could give me something to drink.”
She had a bottle of wine in her fridge, and two cans of Rolling Rock. She gave him one, and he thanked her. His hand, brushing hers, was hot against the cold metal. He opened the tab and sipped. He had never been a heavy drinker. She led him out to the living room and sat him down on the couch, brushing a few of Polly's toys off the Indian blanket that covered it. She wondered if Nelson ever thought of this couch.
“What things,” Naomi said, “do you need to tell me?”
He closed his eyes. “Of course, I shouldn't be here.”
“No?” Naomi said evenly.
“I shouldn't be talking to you. In talking to you I've already decided not to go on being a police officer. I want you to understand that.”
Taken aback, Naomi stared. “Okay. But I don't want you to do anything that will make you lose your job.”
“Doesn't matter.” He shook his head briskly. “I couldn't do this anymore, anyway. Not now.”
She held her own beer in both hands, nervously popping the metal tab in and out. “Okay, then.”
“I went with Charter, back last fall. He was going downstate to meet with the attorney general. He wanted me there, so I went.”
Naomi took a sip and waited.
“I was still kind of out of the loop. I didn't know what he was planning, really. I was just supposed to sit there and play the local sheriff. You know, the man on the scene. So it wasn't just like Charter came in and messed up a local investigation. I was supposed to make out that we never could have solved it on our own, if not for the D.A.”
He laid his head back against the cushion, not looking at Naomi.
“You've got to understand, I didn't foresee any of this.”
“Who could have?” Naomi said, trying for a comforting tone.
“So Warren says to Charter, Can we really win this case? He's been reading the reports, you see, and it seems farfetched to him, and he has a lot to lose if it all falls apart. He tells Charter he can go ahead, but only if he's sure this stuff about the two babies and the two fathers will hold up. He can see what they're going to make of this if it turns out Charter picked the wrong girl and the real person who stabbed the kid and killed it was just someone else completely. I mean, he can understand why Charter made the mistake, but he doesn't want to go forward with it if there's any doubt at all.”
Naomi waited.
“So Charter says, The girl confessed to the stabbing. And he knew it was her, for both kids.”
She sighed. “All right, Nelson. But you know, this isn't really news. I really could have imagined this exact scene, even without your telling me.”
“No, there's more. So then Warren looks at Charter and asks him if there are any holes in the interrogation. Legal holes. Like, is it absolutely foolproof? Because if this thing is going to rest on the confession, it had better be perfect. And Charter says yes, it is.”
“Naturally,” Naomi said, shrugging.
“And then Warren looks at me and asks me the same thing.”
She began to feel funny. It was the way he stopped here, where it made no sense for him to stop. He was waiting for her to prepare herself. Naomi looked at him. Nelson's eyes were closed, and she found herself watching the tiny pulses of motion beneath the lids, as if he were looking for the next words in that darkness.

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