Authors: Emily Winslow
The best I can manage is to say that while I'm there I'll need to focus on this one thing, and be just this one slim facet of myself.
Most of my relationships use much more of me, require me to be all kinds of me: mommy me, partner me, friend me, me who cares about all of everyone else's life, too. I won't have the energy to be pulled in those many directions. Even if people deferred to my circumstances, and I'm sure they would, it's not as if I can just turn it off. With Bill and the rest of them involved in the case, I'm only this. That's exactly who I'll need to be for that week.
Also, I'm reminded of when I was single and traveled. I usually preferred to go alone, because when I went with friends we walked around in a little bubble of home that we brought with us. I don't mean that my friends were unadventurous; just that the routines of our relationships were themselves a part of home that insulated us. Going alone and being just me allowed me to make new relationships with the places themselves.
I need to give Pittsburgh my full attention.
Evan had said that the new defense attorney would be assigned the Monday after the judge upheld the court date. It's now eighteen days past that. I'm impatient. I'm wondering what this delay in attorney assignment might mean for the case.
Trial is less than a month away. At least, it had better be. I'm no longer able to feel sanguine about the silence. I feel cold, and ill, and frustrated. I've gone to an eye doctor because I'm seeing things in my peripheral vision, just out of reach. I e-mail Evan a fourth time, and let my desolation show.
I can do pretty well with almost any information, even with difficult news, but I'm terrible with nothing. Nothing is actually the opposite of nothing. Giving me nothing is giving me every possible thing in the world to worry about it, since what's really going on could be any one of them. Going from every possible thing to just one real thing, even if it's a difficult thing, helps.
Evan answers at last, with apology. He doesn't yet know of a new
attorney for Fryar. I suppose Fryar might already have one and we just don't know. If one truly hasn't been assigned yet, that has me worried; delays now and appeals later seem to be the most realistic concerns and a rushed defense could contribute to both. Nothing to be done about it, though. I offer dates for us to Skype to prepare my testimony.
He replies three days later: we'll talk on Tuesday. He says that one conversation is all that he'll need from me. So, there it is: one conversation is all that I'll get.
But I suppose that more talking wouldn't actually help. Testifying is going to feel weird and scary regardless of prep. Evan's right that once will be enough. It's just strange to realize how little preparation there actually is, on both sides. We're just there to tell the truth that we already know, and getting it out of us with questions is a straightforward matter. It feels huge that we'll be doing it in a courtroom, in front of a jury and judge and some journalists, and being recorded and transcribed, but the words themselves won't be much different from words I've said before. In fact, they'll be much less. Friends care about more details and tangents than juries do.
The only thing that I need to fuss over is that this Tuesday Skype will be my one chance to ask questions “in person.” I must think of everything I'll want from Evan before I travel.
At last, news: a public defender has been assigned to Fryar. Her name is Helen. She passed the bar only three years ago and Evan doesn't know of her having defended any rapes. The only newsworthy defenses of hers that I can find are two drug cases and a mother who abandoned her baby in the woods.
The thing that comes up most about Helen are references to her summer internship when she was still a law student. She worked at Legal Aid of Southeastern Pennsylvania, and her blog post about the experience reveals her to be thoughtful and canny. Fryar seems to have gotten a good one.
She'll have met with Fryar maybe this week; or will next week, surely. Time's running out. I wonder if Fryar's denying the crime to her. She has to know that he did it. I just wonder if that fact is openly on the table.
I don't reply to Evan right away. This is partly because I want first to think carefully if I have any questions to include, and also as a bit of bravado: my restraint demonstrates that I'm not desperate. With some effort, I can be as calm and blasé as he is. I'm not floating anymore; I'm rooted in one spot. It's the trial that's coming closer, doing all of the work.
I discover that I have some boundaries after all: I send out e-mails explicitly asking my Pittsburgh friends not to observe the upcoming trial, and that all of my friends avoid reading about it in the news.
It turns out that I want the prosecution to be known and talked about, but only if it's filtered through me, not observed objectively. Only my version of the trial, in my words, is comforting to me. The trial from other points of view, a reporter's or even a friend's, is wild to me. It feels unpredictable, maybe dangerous. It's supposed to be mine first, only then theirs. Mine first. I tame it.
My swings between anxiety and chipper socializing widen. The jauntiness isn't fake; I genuinely enjoy chatting with friends and staying up late and telling each other funny stories. I love waking up to the mess of our good china still spread out all over the table, and that our kids have to work around an empty bottle and motley, mismatched wine glasses to make room for their breakfast waffles and Asterix comics and gamer magazines. I wouldn't want a life that's all unrelieved panic attacks. But the distance between the two states, the length that I swing between them several times each day, is dizzying.
Tuesday gets here. Because of the time difference, my Skype appointment with Evan isn't until 10
P.M.
my time. I feel it nearing all day.
I've become used to the whole situation, pretty much, and accept it as normal, but there are little flickers when I realize that certain things are actually extreme. Having to recite my testimony for Evan, and be judged and corrected by him, is bizarre. I've never even met him except via three previous video calls and a few e-mails. I'm reminded of Bill apologizing before he questioned me at the hospital that night. I'm reminded of Kevin questioning me in that cramped office in municipal court just before the hearing, while he flipped through the case file that he'd barely had a chance to look at beforehand. It's just a lot of men demanding that I tell them things.
I set up my computer so that I'm decently lit and have an unbusy wall behind me, showing just the edge of one of my mother's bright
paintings from her abstract period in the sixties. I can see a framed print behind Evan. It's something to do with wine, so I think he's in his dining room or kitchen.
I'd already e-mailed him about the possibility of keeping my maiden name, which is also my pen name, out of court. I'm not at all well known in any way, even among people who love books, but I don't want the jury and any spectators to be able to Google me. Professionally, I've put a lot out there, in that desperate way that authors do. It's not just Facebook and blogging; it's reviews and interviews and articles, which I don't control. I've kept photos of my kids to a minimum, just one of the whole family on my public Facebook, but there's a slideshow tour of our house on a newspaper site. I don't mind people seeing it if they come via an interest in my work, but coming from the courtroom is too intimate.
Evan's not sure it can be managed. While he doesn't mind using my married name, or even just my first name, he can't force the defense to do so, and it could be confusing for witnesses on either side who will be referring to original documents that use Winslow. I give in that it will have to be mentioned. It would be more noticeable to make a big deal out of it. He offers that we'll mention both names at the start, then just stick with “Mrs. Stark” or “Emily” during my testimony. That way, we deemphasize Winslow, but if other people use it it won't seem like a contradiction or mistake.
Besides, we're in luck! A Pittsburgh doctor who murdered his wife with cyanide will be on trial the same week as us. That case will suck up all the press. Our small drama will be of little interest to anyone. I don't feel demoted at all; I feel relieved. I hate the thought of being written about by anyone else. That's mine to do.
There will be spectators allowed, Evan answers me. But, besides a few retired folk (who will probably attend the cyanide trial), spectators in this court tend not to be the general public. The judge will have more than just our case going on. We'll be her big case,
her jury case, but she'll still have pleas, motions, and other business to take care of, on something like twenty other cases. During our breaks, she'll work on those, and those attorneys and others involved may well hang out and watch our case unfold. Maybe they'll be checking out how the judge or attorneys handle things, in anticipation of their own cases; maybe they'll just be bored.
Because we have a “trial start date” of Tuesday, October 21, I had assumed that the jury would be picked that Monday, the day before. But, no, Evan says that they'll be chosen Tuesday. His preferences: blue collar; empty nesters with kids in college who'll be emotional about my having been in college when it happened; no lawyers; no one with close ties to someone who's been charged with rape.
Depending how long that takes, I'll testify either late Tuesday or early Wednesday. This could push things out a bit. If testimony doesn't start until Wednesday, and the jury is therefore sent to deliberate on, say, Friday, there's no guarantee that they'll have a verdict by the end of the day. I might have to stay over the weekend for a Monday verdict. I note to make provisional hotel arrangements. The one near the courthouse tends to get full.
More significantly, Evan says that except for my testimony I'll be sequestered until closing arguments. I'll not be allowed in the courtroom for any of it. Hearing what the other witnesses say could taint my version of events. Even after I've had my turn, I have to stay unaffected by others in case Evan needs to call me to the stand again.
That's not what I was expecting.
That's not what I want.
I'd accepted that I would probably be sent out during Georgia's testimony, but the rest of it I wanted to hear. I wanted to be able to look at Fryar as he listened to other people. I wanted to understand what was happening in there. I won't be allowed in, and I won't be allowed to even ask about what's happening in there, not until it's
over. What the hell am I going to do for three days? Georgia is fine with sequestration; she hasn't planned to stay for the verdict. She's just testifying and then going home. But that's not what I want.
I won't even be allowed to talk to Bill or Dan or Aprill about any of my testimony experience, or ask them about theirs, until after the verdict. I want to be with them, eat lunch with them, but what on earth are we going to talk about? I imagine, absurdly, bringing a board game or something. What else will there be to do?
Evan has no transcripts of Helen cross-examining a witness. She may have never even done it, that's how green an attorney she is. To Evan's knowledge, she's not bringing any experts in to testify, so I guess she's not going after the DNA like I'd expected Libbi would. Evan's okay with that at this point; the defense has had ample chance. He calls Helen's approach a “slow plea agreement.” Fryar has nothing to lose by making his attorney pick at victim testimony and comb police reports for supposed contradictions. A single juror's reasonable doubt is all that it would take to make a mistrial.
I remember that Evan had said before that my practice testimony would need to be witnessed by a police officer, but Evan's alone today. He's says we're not doing a full practice tonight, just a warm-up using the parts leading up to the attack. We'll do the rest in person on the Monday before trial, at the courthouse, in the district attorney's conference room. After that he'll show me our courtroom, and the “witness room” where I'll wait to be called in.
But even that Monday practice won't be like the real thing. That practice will focus on all of the facts, but only the facts. During the actual questioning, he'll ask all the same things as we'll have prepared, and then also “How did that make you feel?” each step of the way. Just thinking about it, I frown and lean back, which is exactly why he's going to ask it. Those emotions that I'm protecting are the ones he'll need on display.
He reckons that I'll be on the stand for less than an hour. About
twenty minutes for direct examination from him, twenty for cross-examination by the defense, then maybe five for redirect by himâthat's questioning me againâif there's anything he wants to clarify. He warns me that he might be sarcastic if he needs to point out that something the defense asserted was stupid. That would delight me.
He'll do the work, both the work of controlling direct examination, and the work of defending me under cross-examination, either through objection or on redirect. My only job is to tell the truth.
We practice, just up to Fryar pushing me into my apartment. Then he role-plays as the defense in response, to let me practice that, too.
First he tries pointing out that while I described, both just now and at the hearing, seeing Fryar for the very first time when I exited my apartment that evening, the police report only mentions my seeing him (again) on my way home. Evan pushes and pushes, asking “Well, which one is true?” and I say that of course they're both true. I did see him on my way home, as the police report describes, and I'd also seen him on my way out before, which I'm saying now, and always remembered. I guess it didn't seem important enough to mention to the police or, if I did tell them, important enough to them to write it down. I'm raising my voice.
Evan and I crack up. I'm losing my temper. “No, no, no,” he chides me. He says that while my tone wasn't yet over-the-top, he's pretty confident that he could have gotten me to flare up with just a few more verbal pokes. He tells me, “Don't get pissed off.” He gives me magic words to say to the defense if she tries to trip me up or to pretend that there's contradiction where there isn't any: “I am telling the truth.” Together, they make a good mantra, part to tell myself, and part to tell the jury and everyone who's listening:
Emily, don'
t get pissed off. Everyone, I am telling the truth.
He offers a caveat: Don't let her disrespect me. Don't let her get
away with raising her voice at me. I'm allowed to react to that. But I must match her tone. If she's being civil, even while twisting my words and insinuating things, then I must be civil back to her. Even one juror taking a dislike to me can scupper the case.
This is when Evan's laptop gets low on power. He carries it through to another room to plug it in. There's football on a flat screen in the background. There are curtains on two little high, square windows. It's homey. He says that he's getting married in November. He doesn't have any gray hair at all.
He tells me that his fiancée says that he gets intense once a trial starts, and that I shouldn't expect him to be chatty or social even on breaks or during lunch. He doesn't want that to hurt my feelings. He won't be able to tell me about anything I'm sequestered from or even just how it seems to be going. That's okay, though. I appreciate the heads-up. It isn't his job to look after me. It's his job to win.
He'll have a list of facts to ask me about, not a scripted list of questions. He wants the phrasing of those questions to be spontaneous in front of the jury, just like my answers should be. We'll practice the topics but not the exact things we'll say.
I ask, as I'd asked Kevin, about vocabulary. When we get to the relevant part I want to say that Fryar “fucked” me. I mean, what other word am I supposed to use? Evan says no. Again, what if a juror doesn't like that? What if that word choice makes one of them think less of me? And, amazingly, he says that he would have to then define what fucking is, in case any jurors don't know. I gape. He shrugs. He prosecutes a lot of sex crimes, and apparently he's had jurors who aren't quite sure to what specific act that word refers.
I want to use it because it has that aggressive, angry tone that the physical act had had. It's not “sex” to me; I like sex. I suppose it's intercourse, but that sounds like something in a textbook.
We agree on my saying that at that point he “raped” me, which still isn't quite right, because I think of the whole thing as rape,
not just the fucking. But I agree, and we move on, him smoothly adding that he'll follow “raped” up with “Do you mean that he put his penis in your vagina?” Just in case those people who don't know what fucking is don't know what raping is either.
I think about having to be sequestered. What I want isn't going to happen, so now I have to pick different things to want.
Instead of sitting in the courtroom for the whole thing, I'll have about two days of sitting outside of it. I know that I don't have to sit there; I can go anywhere I want; but I can't imagine going any farther away than I'm forced to. Maybe in the end I will go for a walk, or back to the hotel, or out and about on some distracting day trip, but for now all I can imagine is sitting outside the room, observing who comes and goes, trying to read on their faces and in their postures what's just happened inside.
Instead of comparing impressions with Evan and the detectives, we'll have to not talk about it. How on earth are we supposed to not talk about it? They'll be as sequestered from me as I'll be from them and I won't be able to share anything.
Evan has been on the fence about Bill testifying anyway; he says that he likes to keep his cases lean. Throwing in a lot of police on top of victim testimony and DNA can make a case more confusing rather than more convincing, and gives the defense more people to bluster against.
So I ask Evan to keep Bill off the list. If Bill's not testifying, then he can talk to me about the case, and he can be in the room when it's my turn. He could in fact watch the case for me while I wait outside alone, but it feels more important to have him out in the hallway with me.
It's strange to think of Bill as expendable to the case. He was, after all, the detective. But he's been treated this way from the start of this prosecution, as has Georgia's original detective. Cases aren't
intended to be personal. Once police move on, their ties are cut. He only learned about Fryar's arrest because I tracked him down and told him.
I've been thinking of myself as lucky to have him, but perhaps he's also lucky to have me. What a mixed-up way to think of things. How surprising. But maybe it's true all over: maybe I don't need to feel so hat-in-hand grateful all the time. Maybe we're all just lucky to have each other.
Having made my choice regarding Bill, I still need someone to watch the case for me. Someone will have to tell me afterward what happened besides the bare bones that will be in the transcript, give me all of those tells and tones that say as much as words do. I can't let this be a big blank, not after coming this far.
Several American friends had offered earlier to be available or even to drive or fly should I change my mind about not wanting people to watch the trial. I start asking around, to find someone to attend court for me, to be able to tell me later what I'll have missed.
I tell friends that I've had my first practice with Evan and that I must not get angry on the stand and must not swear. Everyone says, “But, Emily! You don't swear anyway.” Clearly, none of them spend much time inside my head.