Daughter's Keeper (35 page)

Olivia was interrupted in her reverie by harsh sounds of gagging and spitting coming from the neighboring stall. She rose and tugged her maternity panty hose up into place. She left the stall, went to the marble sink, and splashed cold water on her face. She took a paper towel out of the holder and pressed it against her cheeks and eyes. As she was tossing the crumpled towel into the trash, the door to the other stall opened, and Amanda Steele walked out. She stopped suddenly when she saw Olivia and raised her hand to her mouth, dabbing with the back of her wrist at her lips. The two women stared at one another for a moment, and then the prosecutor lowered her eyes to Olivia's bulging belly. She brought a hand to her own stomach, as if involuntarily, and Olivia glanced down. She thought she could see the faintest roundness.

“Are you pregnant?” Olivia asked.

“What?” the prosecutor said, looking trapped.

“Are you pregnant?”

“I…I don't think we should be talking to each other,” she stammered.

Olivia nodded.

The prosecutor walked to the sink, turned on the faucet, and gulped some water from her cupped palm.

Olivia turned to go, and stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “Well, congratulations. If you are, that is. The first trimester is the hardest. It gets better once the nausea passes.” She walked out of the bathroom.

***

Olivia found Izaya waiting for her in the hall, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. As they walked out of the building, she said, “I just peed with Amanda Steele.”

“No kidding.” Izaya sounded distracted.

“I think she's pregnant.”

“Really?”

“Well, she didn't say she was, but she was throwing up, and she looks like she has a little belly. So I asked her.”

He raised his eyebrows. “What did she say?”

“She said she didn't want to talk to me. Or, rather, that she ­didn't think she
should
.”

He gave a disgusted grunt. “I really can't stand that woman. If she is pregnant, she'll probably give birth to a replicant. Robobaby.”

Olivia smiled. They walked for a few more steps, and then she said, “You were amazing in there.”

“Thanks.”

“No, really. That was an incredible closing argument.”

“It was all right.”

“I was just wondering…” she paused.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, what?”

“Well, how much of it was
real
.” She lifted up the hair from the nape of her neck and let it drift down in what she knew was a cloud of red and gold. She could see him watching her from the corner of her eye.

“How much of what was real?”

She wrinkled her brow. “Well, like at the end, when it almost seemed like you were going to cry. Was that real? Or was it for the jury?” She looked at him, forcing her face into an expression of neutral curiosity.

He laughed uncomfortably, and Olivia thought she could detect a flush glowing under the brown skin of his throat and face.

“Both, I guess,” he said. “I mean, yeah, I definitely try to make the jury feel like I care about my clients. I try to make the jury like me, first. The idea is that if they like me, and trust me, then they'll care about the people I care about. Namely, you.”

“So it doesn't
really
make you cry.”

“What doesn't?”

“This whole thing. The trial. The possibility that I'll go to jail.”

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “I care what happens to you, Olivia.”

“Do you really?”

“Of course I do.”

“Like you care about all of your clients?”

He inhaled suddenly. She watched him, waiting for what he was going to say next. She knew what it was that she hoped he would say. In her fantasy of this moment, he spoke the truth of the intensity of his feelings toward her. Olivia knew that Izaya would never act on his emotions, but she wanted to hear him acknowledge them. She wanted him to admit that he wanted her, even that he loved her.

“Yeah, like I care about all my clients. Which is a lot, Olivia. A whole lot.” He started walking again. “Come on. Your mother's going to wonder what's taking us so long.”

***

What Elaine really wanted was to wrap her daughter up in cotton batting and put her somewhere where no one could ever harm her again, but, for now, a decent lunch would have to suffice. When Olivia and Izaya finally joined them, looking out of breath from their walk, the four of them sat down at a table in a corner of a cavernous room paneled in pale wood with French posters decorating the walls. Elaine watched the solicitude with which Izaya treated Olivia: the way he pulled back her chair, the way he leaned forward to talk into her ear. Not for the first time she wondered if the young attorney wasn't a little bit in love with her daughter. Olivia did look remarkably beautiful. Her hair had escaped its knot and curled in delicate tendrils around her face. Her pregnant belly did nothing to diminish her attractiveness; on the contrary, it lent her an air of serenity and gravitas that she'd never before possessed.

Arthur, almost as if he were taking his cue from Izaya, paid special attention to Elaine. He ordered something for himself that he knew she liked, and when it came he offered her half his plate. He even stood up when she left the table to use the restroom, something he hadn't done since their first dates. Elaine felt a rush of gratitude for his attentiveness, although it did make her feel even guiltier at how little he'd been in her mind of late.

They were sipping coffee—all but Olivia, who limited herself to herbal tea—when Izaya's beeper went off. He glanced at it and said, “They're back.”

“But you said it wouldn't be until three at least. It's not even two.” Olivia's voice was panicky and almost hysterical. Elaine got up from her chair and walked around the table. She knelt down next to Olivia and put her arms around her.

“It's okay, honey. It's okay. You're going to be okay.” She murmured into Olivia's hair, inhaling deeply and smelling the lavender of her daughter's shampoo. Olivia gulped once or twice, but then pulled herself together.

“I'm all right. I just got scared for a minute.”

She rested her hands on the table in front of her, then pushed herself to her feet.

“Let's go,” she said.

Elaine and Izaya paid the bills, and they walked quickly back to the courthouse. Amanda Steele was already in the courtroom, waiting. She sat at her table, pursing and unpursing her lips. She, too, looked worried.

The judge entered, and they all rose. He motioned them to their seats and instructed the courtroom deputy to bring in the jury. Again they rose as the members of the jury filed in, one by one. Elaine stared at them, willing them to look at Olivia. The Berkeley acupuncturist did, for a moment, and then looked quickly away. Elaine felt her bowels clench. Arthur squeezed her hand in his. The commingled sweat from their palms felt slick and greasy.

“Madame Foreperson, have you reached a verdict?” Judge Horowitz intoned.

“We have, your honor,” said the older woman with the pink purse.

“Please give the verdict form to the courtroom deputy.”

The forewoman handed the form over the rail separating the jury box from the rest of the courtroom. The deputy walked it over to the judge, who opened it slowly. Elaine felt dizzy, her sight telescoping until the only thing she could see was the white page with her daughter's future written on it.

The judge looked at the form for longer than Elaine thought possible and then handed it to the deputy.

“Please read the verdict,” he said.

The woman cleared her throat and began to read.

“For the crime of distribution of narcotics, to wit, methamphetamine, we, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.”

Elaine sagged against Arthur, tears pouring down her face. “Oh, thank God, thank God,” she whispered.

“For the crime of conspiracy to traffic in narcotics, to wit, methamphetamine, we, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.”

Arthur clenched his fist and pounded it on his knee. “Yes!” he said, aloud.

“For the crime of use of a communications facility, to wit, a telephone, in the commission of a drug offense, we, the jury, find the defendant guilty.”

The room was absolutely silent. Elaine stared at the jury. She had no idea what that meant. Would Olivia go to jail? What did that mean?

“Is that your unanimous verdict?” the judge asked.

“It is,” the forewoman said.

“Counsel, would you like the jury polled?”

“Yes, your honor,” Izaya replied. One by one, the jury members recited their verdict. When it was the acupuncturist's turn, she began to cry. Her heavy chest heaved, and she could barely get the word “guilty” out of her mouth. Elaine glanced down at her hands, away from the streaming eyes. The pinched and sour-faced woman who had so troubled Izaya during jury selection announced her verdict loudly and sternly, as if to reproach the crying juror beside her.

Finally, after the jurors had all been obliged to pronounce their belief in Olivia's guilt to the courtroom, the judge dismissed them. He turned back to the courtroom.

“The case is put over for sentencing in thirty days. Ms. Steele, I assume you have no objection to a continuation of the bond.”

“No, your honor. The government does not object.”

“Your honor,” Izaya interrupted.

“Yes, Mr. Feingold-Upchurch?”

“Ms. Goodman is due to give birth in more or less thirty days. Would it be possible to continue the sentencing for an additional month to allow her both to give birth and recover?”

The judge looked at the prosecutor. “Any objection from the government?”

Amanda Steele stood silently for a moment, looking at Olivia, her hand resting lightly on her own belly.

Elaine glanced at the woman's hand, wondering for a second what was the meaning of that protective palm, before she was once again distracted by her own and her daughter's agony.

Then prosecutor said, quietly, “No, your honor. I have no objection.”

***

Olivia had been breathless with fear when the jury had walked in the room, afraid to look at them, staring instead at her hands clasping and unclasping each other in her lap. Under cover of the counsel table, Izaya reached for her. He held her hand the entire time the verdict was read. When the words “not guilty” echoed in the otherwise silent room, he squeezed her fingers so hard she almost gasped. Then, when the third verdict was announced, his hand went limp, and it was she who gripped him.

As soon as the words were spoken, she began repeating to herself, “Not so long, not so long.” When they had discussed the indictment and the various sentences, long ago, Izaya had explained to her that the “telephone count,” using a communication facility to commit a drug offense, had a maximum sentence of four years. She repeated her mantra again and again, to remind herself that she could have gone to jail for ten years, or even longer. So long as words kept up on a continuous loop in her head, she was calm; if she stopped for even a moment, the vile, caustic taste of panic rose in the back of her throat.

But she did not cry, not when the verdict was announced, nor in the car on the way home. She did not cry while Arthur made his inevitable calculations, informing her that she would be twenty-six when she was released, and the baby four years old. She did not cry when she listened to the telephone message from Izaya that was waiting for her when she arrived at the house. She did not cry when he apologized for having failed her, nor when he promised to do whatever he could to minimize her sentence. She did not cry while she lay on her bed, imagining a prison cell instead of her room.

It was only when she began to write the letter to Jorge's parents that she finally broke down. It took Olivia a long time to write the letter. She tried at first to write with pen and paper, but she kept scratching things out until finally the page was a mess of blue smears. It was her inability to find the words that brought her to tears for the first time that day. At last, frustrated by her clotted sobs, stuffed nose, and the ruined pages, she went out to the dining room and sat down at Arthur's ­computer, hoping that the ­businesslike click of the keys and the presence of Arthur and her mother would inspire in her the necessary detachment. She wrote in Spanish, leaving off the tildes and accents that the keyboard hid behind a labyrinth of option and control keys. Because she did not know whether Jorge had even told his parents about what had happened, her first charge was to break the horrible news. She did so briefly, telling them only that she and Jorge had been arrested because someone got Jorge involved in a drug deal; that Jorge had pleaded guilty; and that she had been convicted of a lesser sentence but one that would require her to spend as much as four years in jail. She told Jorge's parents that she was pregnant, due soon, and that her own mother was unable to care for the baby. She asked them to take the baby in just for as long as she was in jail. Then she called to Elaine.

“Mom, can you come in here?”

Elaine looked through the door from the kitchen where she'd been hiding since they got home from court. Her face looked drawn and almost gray.

“Yes?”

“There's something I need you to do.”

“Anything, honey.”

Anything but keep my baby for me
, Olivia thought.

“I'm going to need you to take the baby to Mexico. To, you know, deliver it.”

“To deliver it?”

“To Jorge's parents. I told you, I'm going to ask them to take the baby.”

Olivia and Elaine had not spoken of her plan since she'd first mentioned it. Neither, however, had they spoken of adoption, nor of any other alternative for the baby's care. Olivia assumed that, like her, her mother had been counting on an acquittal making any other plans superfluous.