Authors: Emily Winslow
“He didn't have to do that to [the second victim]. You saw [her] on the stand and her reaction when she said she was awakened by the masked assailant and he said do as I say or I'm going to kill your baby. That was it for her. You saw the reaction that she had to it even now when she testified on the stand. He didn't have to hold a gun to her. He didn't have to threaten her personally at all. All he had to do was threaten her child. She did whatever he wanted. It shows you he uses whatever he needs to use to get his victim to submit.”
Just enough power.
She makes me want to cheer. She understands. She makes the jury understand. Then she recaps the crime and the efficient, high-standards lab work. She demolishes the defense's “so-called expert.” I think,
Evan, be like that. Please.
Then the jury is reminded that they must agree unanimously in their verdict. They begin deliberations at 11:06
A.M.
that Monday morning.
There are a couple of fizzes of questions from the jury room, then a guilty verdict five hours later, at 4:15, in just before the end of the day.
I close the document. I feel ready. This is what's ahead, with a different judge, with Evan instead of “Ms. Necessary.” Libbi is the constant. She's tough, and willing to stretch the plain truth, but she's safer for us than Abigail. In terms of ensuring that the trial will go forward in October, an active defense is better than Abigail's passive assumption of a plea.
Libbi will keep Evan on his toes. That's good. That's her job. Now that Evan knows it's her, now that she's flat-out told him that there will be no plea, we can get to work. I've been ready. Now she's making Evan ready. He'd assumed a plea, too, as much as Abigail had. So did Bill.
I knew better. Fryar has only confessed once in his life, back
in 1976, within hours of what I believe was his first rape. (I don't count his plea in the later Staten Island drug case, because he used it to facilitate fleeing the jurisdiction.) By the time the '76 rape got to court, he was begging the court for lenience. He's been fighting ever since; fighting uselessly, but fighting nonetheless. His pattern, over years of lawbreaking, is denial and delay, and sometimes escape, no matter the evidence against him.
When Aprill had first interviewed Fryar in New York, he'd spoken freely about the legs of the two Shadyside victims. His girlfriend had explained to Aprill that he was confident of the statute of limitations. Later, though, when his situation under the new law was clear, he fought even extradition across state lines, which gained him only a few extra months on Rikers Island. He doesn't seem to have real confession in him, not anymore, not since he was twenty-four years old, thirty-eight years ago.
It might be a warped form of dignity, refusing to give in. At least he goes down swinging. It might be that fighting the prosecution makes it plausible for him to continue to claim innocence even if he's convicted; in stereotype, rapists are given a hard time in prison, so deniability could be worth it inside. I don't think he does it to try to convince himself. I think he understands that he did it, and just doesn't want to pay for it.
His previous court patterns fill pages with motions. I've collected New York records that not even Evan or Dan or Aprill have, about Fryar's drug arrests and other crimes. This is simply how he is: he resists. He resists conviction the way that I resisted him, even though we were each up against powers greater than our own.
I think I know Fryar better than anyone at this point. I'm the only one who tried to know him. I'm the only one who looked.
Like love, my needy grief feels like it will last “forever.” It's that big. I have nowhere else for it to spill over.
Well, one place. It spills backward, too. I feel like I've always been this way, even though I know that I haven't.
A friend of John's helps me.
Months earlier, John had mentioned to her, Anna, that Gavin and I would be visiting the church where she's vicar. It was on our short list of new places to try, and is the oldest church in Cambridge, older than even the eight-hundred-year-old university. As soon as I tell her that John had sent me, she knows who I am, but not about the court case; just that we're choir parents, and that John was supposed to have baptized W. a week after the accident. I think she was the one John had been going to send me to from the start, if I'd preferred to talk with a woman.
She and I reminisce about John, there at the church door during after-service coffee time. She's supposed to be seeing people off as they go out, but she kindly gives me her full attention instead. I take care to try to phrase things as interesting or funny. I try to make it worth people's while to listen to me.
I mention the prosecution, in passing, to explain what John had done for me. I tell her that he'd been looking after me. Anna goes to retrieve her calendar, without making me ask.
Later that week, we meet in a tiny room above the sanctuary. On the way up the spiral staircase, we talk about cassocks, and street clothes that go with priestly collars, but not because she's a woman; I'd talked about vestments with John, too (and, once, with a sparkly, colorfully robed male bishop). Clothing is personal; even ritual clothing is; and it raises funny, sweet stories if you ask the right questions.
I have to explain the case to her from scratch, all the way back to 1992. I've practiced summing it up quickly and efficiently, hitting all of the important points. Enough people know about it now that it's no longer a release for me to tell the long-ago parts; I'm anxious to get to
now,
which I suppose is a sort of progress all by itself.
We both cry over John a little. I have less right to cry than she does, she who was part of his inner circle, so I tell, a bit possessively, about the kindness of the other choir parents and how they deferred to my grief. I was not as much a friend to John as she was, but, in the small world of the choir, people recognized that his death had hit me hard. I stake my claim to tears.
She says some of the same wise things as John; they were trained together, so that makes sense. She has a similar sense of humor; after all, they were friends. These likenesses comfort me and unnerve me and make me feel sick the rest of the day. I can't sleep that night. It feels wrong to replace him. It feels wrong to do anything less than freezing the world at the point just before he died.
I visit Anna again, a week later, up the same spiral staircase, in the same little room. I feel sick again, but that night I can sleep after all. I hate that John's fading away. Only being sad keeps him. I don't want to let him be gone. I want to fight. I want to object.
I'd had an involuntary thought after John's death: Who would I rather have died instead of him? Even in my fantasies, death is there. I can push reality around enough in my imagination that I can picture the dead one not being him, but I can't make up any version of that day without the crash, without
someone
dying in it. Death punctures through everything, even into my invented dreamworlds. I can only pretend that things are a little bit different from what really happened, not wholly changed, as if my imagination is powered by a genie with a single, limited wish, just one.
Anna invites me to her home for our next meeting. I prepare a little list, like I used to do for meeting with John, jotting notes during the week whenever I think of something I'd like to say. I have the last note of what I'd intended to tell him.
Just after the happy exhaustion of Switzerland, just after the distraction of the debacle with our previous church, I'd made a note to tell John about how the prosecution was feeling lighter to me, a
lull before the eventual trial. There was the baptism coming, and the Tour de France; things to look forward to first. He died three days before I was going to tell him that I was, at that moment, happy.
I'm not actually suicidal; it's just something I think about; but if I were to say even just that, then people would try to “do something,” at worst something awful with doctors, so I can't say anything at all, to John's friend Anna or anyone. Telling Gavin would only worry him.
Besides, I would only do it if I could actually disappear. My body is the worst part of me, and leaving it behind, empty, just seems disgusting and embarrassing, so it's not going to happen. It's not.
It's just that dread of the trial and grief over John are too much. I could manage one or the other. I was managing just the one, just the trial. When it was supposed to happen in June I was ready, but I haven't been able to sustain that blithe alacrity. I explained things to someone this week, just the practical facts, and listening to myself felt strange and surprising. I heard myself describe that Evan and I would have to practice so that he'd know what questions to ask to make me break down on the stand. (Evan wouldn't call it that. He'd say “elicit an emotional reaction.”) I meant to sound merely pragmatic, but it sounded awful. Evan's the good guy and even he's got to make me hurt. Then, after he's through with me, Libbi gets her turn, and she's not on my side. Reporters will scribble, like they did at the hearing, more so now that it's a proper trial. My breathing speeds up. I have to tell myself off:
Just local reporters. Don't be so dramatic.
It's been almost a year. In two weeks we'll lap the start: September 12, when Arthur Fryar was arrested. The trial is five weeks after that. I managed twelve months on adrenaline. I've run out.
Term is about to begin. The college's upcoming service of Admission and Dismissal panics me. It's scheduled for the night before
I fly for court, and John's replacement will be leading it. I'd prefer to sit out, just to listen from the nave, but S. with his now-low voice is being dismissed and will be honored; and W.'s promotion within the choir is to be recognized. They'll need me to be cheerful and happy for them, celebrating with smiles.
I practice for it, just like I practice looking at photos of Fryar in a suit. I sit in the empty chapel. Tears run all over my face. This isn't going to work.
Again, tourists come in while I'm weeping. Goddamn summer.
I lie.
I tell people that it's all right if they don't have time to talk or to read my updates or to meet up. I suppose it is, in a sense, all right, in that I intellectually accept that there are many genuinely good reasons for anyone not to be able to do these things, and that these legitimately significant reasons don't mean that people don't care. But the implication that I'm therefore open to either answer, yes or no, is entirely a lie. I need yes.
I lie to Bill. I tell him that I would
completely understand
if he's unable to get away from work for trial week. I ask him to be there for my testimony and for the verdict, and
by the way
it would be great if he can be there for all of it but of course it makes perfect sense if he can't. It was one thing for him to be with me at the hearing in January; that was only one day. The trial will be at least three. October is right in the middle of the fall semester. He has to
teach, after all. He has to help run his department at the business school.
He promises me all of the days, to just sit with me in court while I listen to everyone else testify, all three days plus one extra in case the trial goes long. He'd already put them into his calendar. He thinks he'll be sequestered for my testimonyâthat is, kept out of court so that my version doesn't affect hisâbut he'll be there.
Relief. Ground under my feet. Without Bill, the only person in the courtroom who'd remember me from that night in 1992 would be Fryar. Bill balances him out.
Everything is about to start up again for the new school year: music, sports, clubs. Over and over, the other parents are going to ask “How are you?” reflexively, with no real meaning, passing the question around from person to person like a plate of cookies.
I plan:
Smile. Say “fine.”
That should always be the unthinking standard. I can vary this if a good opportunity pops up, but I mustn't tell the truth without a good reason, without a considered decision to do so.
I am not fine.
As things get worse in my head, I'm conscious of a careful balance: I could drive people away just when I need them most. I will go ahead and talk about the trial one-on-one, but even then I must choose my words with care, giving preference to interesting facts and good news developments. My personal mandate is to be light, direct, and entertaining about the prosecution unless specifically invited to be otherwise. I can't let myself mess this up. Just being with people who know helps, even if we only touch on the subject lightly. Being too much alone right now would be a bad idea.
I fill the calendar between now and trial with small dinner parties and chats over coffee and cake. I ask for yeses everywhere, asking for so many that any noes will be obscured by acceptances. I lie in
every invitation:
Totally no big deal if you can'
t come.
I practice, in case of declines:
Don't be silly! I shouldn't have asked. It doesn't matter.
August and September appear to be next to each other, but that's an illusion from looking at them from above. Really, one is miles below the other, and stepping off the end of summer is a fall from a cliff into a very different and new academic year. A lot is suddenly changed now, especially me.
S. starts school for the first time, with a fresh haircut, new jeans bought in haste to accommodate his growing legs, and a new red hoodie that he puts over a polo shirt every morning, even before leaving his bedroom. He likes the way it makes him look like the teenager he's trying out being. W. returns to all of his activities. Choir begins again for him, with a dense schedule of rehearsals, services, concerts, and John's memorial. I'm wary of the choir parties that I used to enjoy. I want to socialize individually, but don't trust myself to be able to chitchat and flit from person to person. I plan a short errand I must run after dropping W. off for the “welcome tea.” I can come back if I want, or pretend that the errand ran long. I give myself options.
What I wanted isn't what I want anymore. My urge to share about the prosecution, which culminated in a flurry of e-mails in recent weeks, has reversed. Now there are two kinds of people in the world: those who already know and those who don't and won't, not until the trial's over. Everyone around me is now fixed in their position on one side of that line or the other. I won't resist if the subject comes up; if, in a group, one more person needs to be filled in just to keep up with the conversation. But I no longer feel the need to tell for telling's sake, or even able to. There's only moving forward from here, talking about what's happening now, right now, with people who are already caught up with what came before.
The defense is trying to change the dates. My affection for Libbi-
with-an-
i
's brisk efficiency evaporates. She's only trying to move things out by a week, so I think this is a schedule clash for either her or for a witness, not a preparation-of-her-case issue. Evan asks me to propose alternate dates, as if it's generous to let me. I push back:
no
. I've already worked around the current dates, and by doing so ensured that everything except for those dates has become a schedule clash for me. I don't want to scramble to change flights, give up the hotel I like, miss my children's events here at home, or push up January's eventual travel for sentencing to overlap with the February launch of my new book here in England. I don't, I realize, want to lose the connection with the Admission and Dismissal service the night before I fly. I've been dreading it, but now I cling to it. Choir people know what's happening. There will be proper good-byes. I want to keep that.
It's a good thing that Evan and I are communicating over e-mail and not on the phone. If I'd been actually speaking to him I would have blurted out that he should “man up,” which is not something I should say to my attorney. I mean it, though. He should stand up to Libbi. If someone needs to bend here, I don't think it should be me.
Gavin observes that at least we're haggling over days, not months. That's true. But we are haggling over a bit else: over who matters. We'll find out who the judge thinks is important when she decides about dates.
The next morning I find out that it's me who matters. Me! October 21 sticks. I e-mail Evan, writing “thank you” six times, and “yay,” and a smiley face. Bill e-mails me, “Whew.” Relief all around.
A new public defender will be assigned to Fryar, his fourth attorney in this proceeding. That's how they kept the date: getting rid of Libbi. The timing feels much more important than anything else; I won't miss her.
Gavin is concerned that assigning a new defense attorney this
close to trial may itself become grounds for delay, but I think that the public defender's office is so overburdened that Libbi had perhaps not yet begun work on Fryar's case anyway. Or, if she had, she can hand that work off. Honestly, I don't know how much work Evan's done yet on our side. There are still six weeks to go and he will have had other cases all summer.
This same day, Sam Centamore, the now-retired detective who had taken Fryar's confession in 1976, sends me Fryar's booking photos. I glance at them. Mug shots have that serious, direct gaze. It's upsetting. I close the e-mail but the images linger in my mind.
Of the few photos I've found online, only one is of Fryar close to now: around age sixty, gray-haired, and smaller than he used to be. The rest are from the middle of his life, a span of decades when he was recognizable as the man in my apartment in 1992. That Arthur Fryar was robust, with chubby cheeks, a husky build, and a friendly face. These mug shots from the seventies are palpably different. This is the young military man, fresh from two years of intense training. He looks angry. He looks strong. I feel sick.
I make myself open the e-mail again. He's not angry-looking after all. His stare is disconcerting, but a closer look reveals puppy-dog eyes, lost and worried. He's holding himself straight but he looks tired. This all went down in the middle of the night.
He was just twenty-four. That age looks young to me from where I am now, though I remember feeling adult when I was twenty-four myself. Then, I was in graduate school at night, had a job working at a tech company during the day, and was starting a freelance writing career on the side. I lived in my parents' house and had student loans, but I'd finally gotten my driver's license and Mom helped me buy a little red car. That age is young and old mixed together. An adult, yes, but the youngest kind of adult, a baby of an adult. That's what I see in his face: that fragile starting-out time, trying-on time.
When my kids are twenty-four, I think they'll still be coming home for Christmas.
In his e-mail, Sam asked me what kind of book I'm writing about this. That means he hasn't figured me out yet. I'd given him my website address in my first communication, which he may or may not have looked at; it's about my fiction, so even if he has looked it would still be reasonable for him to wonder what I'm writing about Fryar. What I'm sure he hasn't done, yet, is also look up Fryar's current case, or he would have noticed the similarities between the then-CMU-student victim now living in the UK, and the author bio on my book flaps describing an “American novelist living in Cambridge, England” who “trained as an actor at Carnegie Mellon University's prestigious drama conservatory.” The connection is there to be made, easily, when he does look.
I give myself up. I send off an e-mail that, if his pattern holds, he'll see in a week or two. He's been kind to me and I owe him the truth.
The mug-shot images idle in my mind, and along with them a motherly sadness toward Fryar's younger self.
There's a lot that I need right now, a lot that I'm fighting for. Keeping the court date was important, and friends saying yes is important, and being understood is important. I know what it is to feel desperate. I know what it is to need things, and for that need to feel vast. What I don't know is what it's like to live in such a narrow space that bursts of cruelty feel like the only way to breathe. It must be terrible to be inside Fryar's head, inside his body, inside his life.
It became worth it to young Fryar, desperately worth it, to trade his future and his sense of shared humanity for a brief high-point of power. I believe that these pictures are of him just hours after that first decision. He doesn't seem proud of it. He seems resigned.
Whether in the end it turned out to satisfy him as he'd hoped, he'd done it and there was no taking it back.
The psych eval that had been requested by Abigail, defense attorney number two, was then canceled by Libbi, defense attorney number three, so I'm not likely to be handed any understanding. I have to find it myself. Wherever Fryar's urge comes from, and however different he and I are in how we act out, we're in one general way alike: there are things that we need very, very much.
I feel fragile, and I need a lot. I think he does, too, and has for a very long time.
I'm being pushed on a current. I float. In five weeks, I'll arrive at trial, bump against its shore.
From growing up in New Jersey, I know a certain look to the sky that means imminent rain. That same gray look doesn't mean rain here in England; that color can hold for days without a drop falling. I've had to learn to read it differently. I've learned to read people here differently, too. Their reticence that I would, at home, accurately read as a snub, is just kindness awaiting an invitation.
The college is now where I feel most at home outside of our little family. That's where John's loss is understood, and where there's the closest that I have to a cohesive group of friends rather than individual relationships. It's become a surprising bookend to my Pittsburgh college years back when the crime originally happened: two universities that, despite some rocky moments, rose to the occasion and became safe places for me. I'm not officially attached to this Cambridge college, just tenuously connected by motherhood of choristers and the participation that that allows, but nevertheless I feel part of it, and am recognized as part of it by those who matter. I'm grateful.
A major plot point in the novel I've been revising all this past year, the one that's been recently accepted and has a bit of John in
it, takes place here in this college. The character Imogen's happiest childhood memories are of her older brothers singing in the choir that my boys sing in. She and her littler brother had been tagalongs, unable to join the choir because she was a girl, and he was too young. I wrote about them, not the choirboys, because I had discovered that the tagalong experience is itself a primary experience of its own thing, not just a secondary experience of the choir, or orchestra, or whatever it's attached to. What W. and I did for years, while S. rehearsed his drums and his singing, were their own things: the unrelated jazz band we'd eavesdrop on, the nearby collection of plaster casts of ancient sculpture that we'd visit, the jigsaw puzzles from home that we'd spread out on the carpet of the concert hall lobby. I wanted to capture that life, that nearby life, which was as full as the life onstage.
W. is now in the choir, too, so I'm the tagalong left, just me. The funny thing is, it wasn't until I'd finished the whole first draft that I even realized that Imogen was, in that one sense, me. Obviously the little brother had been inspired by W.; Imogen, the big sister, had been to my conscious mind merely a necessary invention. But of course there were two tagalongs there, not just one, not just the little boy. Of course the other one was me.
I get to be in the center of other parts of my life. It's all right that, for my kids, I stand on the edges. Edges are interesting places all on their own. Edges can be the centers of their own circles.
I'm glad that I wrote about that for W. It turned out also to be meaningful for me.
People are making me explain again why I want to go to Pittsburgh alone. It's difficult to find the words to do so, because it's not a decision. How to explain a primal want?