Acts of Love (19 page)

“Maybe I was wrong.”

“Maybe you were right.”

“Don't do this,” he said.

“Do what? Be like you?”

“You sound so bitter. Have I really hurt you that much?”

“It's what
I've
done, or not done, that I regret. It's not your fault that I thought I needed you so much.”

“Is need so terrible? I need you.”

She laughed. “Now.”

After that night, the silence was pierced, replaced by a vociferous arguing that they had never engaged in before, a constant contest of wills, a torrential yelling over the simplest of things, forgetting to fill the car with gas, leaving towels unfolded, that always ended in a litany of ancient crimes.

There were flashes, though, sudden illuminations, when they were both overwhelmed by the possibility of losing each other, losing
them,
and they came together with the intense desperation of couples on the eve of war.

Julia and Ali seemed like an audience in the dark to them both, the light so glaring on their own private stage that they could not quite make out their daughters' faces in the blackness, only knew that they were out there.

 

O
N A
T
HURSDAY AFTERNOON IN LATE FALL
, the school guidance counselor, Mrs. Murphy, called Ann and suggested that she and her husband come in that evening for a conference about Julia.

Ted and Ann sat in the two small wooden seats before Mrs. Murphy's desk, which was cluttered with aloe plants, cactuses, and books on child psychology. Mrs. Murphy had cropped gray hair, no makeup, a large necklace of coral and silver beads, and silver cuff bracelets. Her voice had a flat Midwestern accent, and she leaned forward and down when she spoke, as if years of talking to children had permanently bent her neck.

“Is there anything going on at home that might be disturbing Julia?” she asked.

“No,” Ted answered quickly.

“Why?” Ann asked.

“She's been having certain difficulties lately. I suppose you heard what happened this morning?”

“No,” Ann admitted, already guilty, negligent, unfit.

“I see. Well, Julia threw a metal file box at her teacher's head.”

“Good Lord,” Ann exclaimed.

“Did it hit her?”

“Her aim, or lack thereof, is hardly the point here,” Mrs. Murphy answered Ted sternly. “There have been other incidents as well. Aggression toward other children. Cheating on a test. I was hoping you could help us figure out what might be triggering these episodes, tell us what other issues she might be dealing with.”

“Issues?” Ted asked.

“Something in her home life.”

“I told you, everything is fine.”

“I see. Well, you do understand that if anything even remotely like this happens again, we will have to insist on some form of counseling if she is to remain with us. As a matter of fact, I strongly suggest that you consider it now. Before this escalates.”

“We'll think about it,” Ted said, rising.

“I hope so.” Mrs. Murphy stood up and shook hands with them both. “Things can go too far, you know. No one wants to see that happen here.”

Ann and Ted drove away from the school in silence, as if Mrs. Murphy could hear anything they might say, use it against them.

Only when the school had long receded from view did Ann begin quietly, “We can't go on like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

Ted accelerated, sped through a flashing light, slowed. “Why don't we go away, just the two of us?” His voice quickened as the idea formulated, already festooned with hope.

“Where?”

“I don't care. Anywhere. Wherever you want. Someplace warm. Florida.”

“What about the girls?”

“Sandy can stay with them. Ann, don't throw up roadblocks. Please. Just say yes. Don't give up on us.”

Ann nodded slowly, and they drove the rest of the way in silence while Ted began plotting ways, with the hot tropical sun his ally, to win her back.

T
HE
H
ARDISON
C
OUNTY
C
OURTHOUSE
, a Greek-revival building from 1840, glistened in the diamond-cut morning sun. Inside, the ancient pipes burped and spit, shooting steam into the overcrowded room. Ted sat at a large oak table with his lawyer, Harry Fisk, pulling at a hangnail on his right forefinger until it bled. He had shaved for the occasion, and put on the navy suit that he had bought for Jonathon and Estelle's funeral two years ago. He blotted the sore against his pants leg and looked up nervously. On the far wall, matte gold letters arranged in two lines read “In God We Trust.” The American flag hung limply to the side. There was something dingy about it, used, as if it needed cleaning, pressing. Across the aisle, at the prosecution's table, the assistant district attorney, Gary Reardon, aligned and realigned his notes, squaring the corners of the long yellow sheets ever more perfectly. The judge's seat was still empty.

People who had never been in court before sat crammed next to each other on the long pale benches, reminiscent of church, but lighter, the color of school desks, fidgeting with anticipation, tapping their feet, their eyes darting this way and that, carnivorous, their voices a steady hum of innuendo and theory and plans for lunch. In the last row, two elderly men huddled together, their disheveled white hair almost touching, as they discussed the last trial they had witnessed and the merits of the presiding judge—courtroom kibitzers who knew every petty officer by name, fearsome critics of procedure and rulings who never missed a day. Sandy sat next to John in the first row of the gallery, which was reserved for family. He was saying something—about the audience? the weather? simple reassurance?—she didn't hear. Her eyes had caught on the back of Ted's head as he turned to Fisk and said something that made the two of them laugh briefly—laugh here, now—and she instantly despised him for that brief laugh as much as she despised him for anything, more, so that it became—the turn of the back of his head, the laugh—the thorn that lodged in her dreams, again and again, waking and sleeping, the only explanation or evidence that she would ever need.

The bailiff walked to the center of the room and took a long and dispassionate view of the full house. He had a shaved head that was shadowed by a semicircle of pale stubble about his ears, a balding man gone bold, and a drooping gray mustache. His eyes, behind wire aviator glasses, were rheumy with well-practiced apathy. “Hear ye, hear ye,” he called out in a deep, clear voice. “The Superior Court for the State of New York, Hardison County, is now in session. All ye having business here draw near and ye shall be heard. The Honorable Judge Louise Carruthers presiding.”

Judge Carruthers strode in through a side door, bathed in black robes, her hair the caramel color of a graying woman uncertain of whether to go brown or blond. She had fine features just beginning to coarsen and a voice at once gravelly and girlish. The lustrous red collar of a silk blouse rose from the sea of black, and she straightened it before sitting down. She poured herself a glass of water from the yellow-and-black plastic pitcher on her desk, took a sip, and then looked up and nodded to the bailiff to begin.

“Are the people prepared to proceed?” he asked.

Reardon, already sitting ramrod straight, straightened even further. “The people are ready.”

“Defense?”

“The defense is ready,” Fisk answered eagerly.

The bailiff's eyes lingered on him a moment before moving on. He nodded to the jury clerk, who slowly opened the massive oak door to his left.

The seven men and five women of the jury, along with two alternates, entered in single file, plump and skinny, in jeans and suits, all looking anxiously at the defendant, at the judge, at the gallery, their avid curiosity only slightly tempered by their newfound sense of duty. When they were seated in their wooden chairs, legs and hands crossed, except for one exceptionally tall, strapping woman in gray flannel slacks who sat with her legs spread. Judge Carruthers turned to them. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.”

The jury, impressed by her robes and the height her bench bestowed, shyly muttered good morning.

Carruthers turned to the prosecution's table. “Mr. Reardon, please proceed.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.” Reardon rose, a slightly built man with wheat buzz-cut hair and sharp, buzz-cut features, a man who believed in discipline, symmetry. An absolutist by nature, he had come to accept, after twenty-one years at the bar, the shadings and the opacities of the law, the inevitable relativity of guilt and innocence, in an intellectual manner, though his soul still rebelled. He found this case particularly distasteful, with all its implications of a family's immune system turned terminally against itself, something he neither understood nor sanctioned. He had been married to the same woman for nineteen years, and though there had been disappointments, chronic illness, childlessness, they had predicated their lives upon the belief that the only true option was kindness. Polite, aloof, generous, he was not known around the office for his sense of humor. He was also one of the rare ADAs who had no political ambitions. “Worse,” Fisk had told his client when he found out who they were up against, “he's got morals, the only thing more dangerous than ambition.”

Reardon walked slowly to the jury. “May it please the court. Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.” He looked at each of them in turn with his clear and patient eyes, then shook his head with a weighty sadness. “This is one of the most despicable cases that you will ever be asked to imagine. In this case, you will learn how, on the night of October 22, the victim, Ann Waring, was brutally shot to death in her own home, in front of her own daughter.” He paused. “She was shot by this man, Theodore Waring.” He pointed directly at Ted's face and the jury followed him, taking in the frisson of shock in Ted's eyes before he readjusted them to impassivity. “The evidence will show,” Reardon continued, “that Mr. Waring entered the home with a loaded rifle and, after arguing with his wife, purposefully aimed, fired, and killed her. As horrific as that is, it is not the worst of it, for this deadly act was committed before an eyewitness, his very own daughter. Julia Waring was standing not three feet away when she saw her father raise and aim the gun. In a desperate attempt to save her mother's life, she lunged at him, hoping to wrest the gun away, but tragically, it was too late. She saw her mother shot before her. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, to stop and imagine this.”

He stopped and shut his eyes, visualizing for all to see, grimacing painfully as he came to. “This is a case of the most deadly loss of control, of a lethal temper. This is a case of intentional murder by a spurned man. A man who had finally realized in a flash of deadly insight that he would never get his wife back, and could not bear the thought of seeing her with someone else. A drunken man. A man with no conscience and no regret. A man, you will learn, with a reputation for his quick temper and his lack of self-control. Ted Waring murdered his wife, ladies and gentlemen. He may not have planned it, but it was murder nevertheless. In the end, you will see that the evidence supports only one verdict: that Ted Waring is guilty as charged.” He stopped short, swiveled around, and, his heels clicking on the polished floor, walked back to his desk and sat down.

Fisk, careful not to show surprise at the brevity of Reardon's opening statement, rose quickly, before the silence gave it room to harden, to set. He, too, appeared saddened, chastened. “There are cases,” he began, “that try the heart of even the most jaded among us. And this”—he leaned up against the jury box—“is one of them. No one, no one can relish this. A life is lost, a family shattered. By one tragic accident. One truly tragic accident. But an accident, the worst twist of fate, nevertheless. It is not uncommon”—he leaned back and glanced in the direction of the prosecution before returning his steady gaze to the jury—“when a fatal accident occurs to strike out in pain, looking for someone to blame. It is even understandable. But it is not justice. Your job, ladies and gentlemen, is to deliver justice—even in the most wrenching of circumstances.

“In one awful second on the night of October 22, four lives were destroyed. Yes, four. For Ted Waring's life was shattered as surely as anyone else's. We plan to show that, far from being in a rage, Ted Waring returned home that night with only one plan in mind, to reunite with his wife. He loved her, ladies and gentlemen, the way you can only love someone you have grown up with, raised children with, and, yes, weathered storms with. Some of you know that kind of love. If you do, you are lucky. And you will know, too, that no one is more destroyed by this accident than Ted Waring.

“Ted Waring had absolutely no history of physical violence of any kind. The sole witness is a confused thirteen-year-old girl with such a spate of emotional problems that even her school has recommended counseling. A good but misguided girl who, baffled by her parents' separation, would say and do anything to hurt her father. A girl who perhaps feels guilty that it was, in fact,
her
action that led inadvertently to her mother's death. For Julia Waring lunged impetuously at her father that night, and in so doing caused the gun to fire.

“No, this is not a case that anyone can like. But I ask you once more to look deep within, and to find justice.” Fisk nodded to the jury before he returned to the table where Ted sat, his eyes lowered, as Fisk had instructed him, in grief. The courtroom rustled with grumbling stomachs, sneezes, unspoken words swelling with the need for release.

Judge Carruthers put down the glass of water she had been sipping and refilling throughout the presentations. She had quit smoking five days ago, and though she had taken to shoving immense wads of gum into her mouth outside the courtroom, it was obviously inappropriate here. She turned to the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry, but a matter has come up in another case that I must hear. I hope this doesn't inconvenience you, but we stand adjourned until tomorrow morning.”

Ted looked up. He stood with ill-disguised relief and, his shoulders squared, steady and defiant, he walked down the center aisle, past Sandy and John, past the onlookers, parasitic strangers rancid with curiosity, past the courtroom groupies, past Peter Gorrick, busy angling in front of two reporters who had shown up from out of town, and through the heavy carved wooden doors, concentrating only on this unexpected gift of the free afternoon before the trial resumed.

 

J
ULIA STOOD ON THE STEPS
of the school building, alone amid the tight clusters of classmates, waiting for Ali. The other children, long inured to the padding of solitude that she had created (though she would have said it was they who had created it, with their cliques and their made-up languages and their secret jokes and their smothered laughter at her approach), nevertheless gave her an even wider berth than usual, and she looked straight through it, meeting no one's eyes. She had spent hours before the full-length mirror at home, practicing stillness, implacability. Only after five minutes did she begin to shift her weight from one foot to the other, move her knapsack from the left shoulder to the right.

Ted, crouched in his car, saw her look back into the building, then down at her large black plastic watch. He quickly opened the car door and began to scurry across the street to her.

But before he had reached the curb, another man slid, as if from nowhere, to her side.

Ted hurried back to the car, sank low, waited.

 

“H
EY THERE
, J
ULIA
.”

Julia looked up, suspicious.

“You don't remember me, do you?”

“Maybe.”

“My name's Peter. Peter Gorrick. I work at the
Chronicle
with your aunt, Sandy. She introduced us when you and your sister visited the newsroom a couple of months ago.”

“Oh.”

“Can I buy you a soda?”

Julia looked around the steps, the satellites of schoolmates eyeing her and her visitor. “I'm waiting for my sister. I have to walk her home.”

“Okay, I'll tell you what. Why don't we go for a walk around the block, and by the time we get back, she'll probably be here.”

“I guess,” Julia agreed tentatively, wanting only to get away from the steps, the eyes.

Peter Gorrick smiled. The sun glared against his tinted, wire-framed glasses, and he tipped his head to avoid it. “Good.” He began to walk, hopeful that Julia would follow.

“Why do you want to talk to me?” she asked.

Peter kept his voice light, easy. “I thought, with all you're going through, you could probably use a pal. Your friends giving you a hard time?”

“I don't care.”

“You know, Julia, I was the same age as you when my parents divorced.”

“So?”

“It can be pretty tough, that's all.”

“Did you live here?”

“No, I grew up in the city.”

“What city?”

“New York.”

She nodded. If he had asked, she could have quoted him population figures, ethnic demographics, the acreage of Central Park. “And you came here?”