Jane Doe January (22 page)

But they're not making me ask.
Evan has offered,
I remind myself, offered me time in the courthouse or just time with him in the city, but it can feel bold just to take the chance that he really means it and say yes.

Everything is prepared already: tickets, reservations, the ride to Heathrow, even clean clothes ready to pack. Embracing the going takes less effort than canceling would.

I remember I'd wanted to run away back in 1992. I'd wanted to live that Amtrak journey between Pittsburgh and home for days instead of hours, blasting my Walkman on full volume and subsisting on cheese and crackers from the snack bar. It's the journey I'd wanted, not the getting anywhere. I'd wanted to be in that in-between, nowhere-yet place for a while. Similarly, I'd wanted to borrow my aunt and uncle's Venice apartment, unshutter the windows, and stare at the view. Both of those fantasies were of temporary, transitory places, and had something else in common, too: in them I was alone.

Some people don't believe that I'm an introvert because I'm not shy. I'm good at public speaking and at making friends, but I need a base of solitude from which to interact. I treasure my hiding spots.

I'm attached to too many people here in Cambridge. There's no place to run away to within this city. The whole point of running away is to become out of reach, if not unfindable then at least to become in control of the finding.

I tell everyone what's going on by e-mail. I touch from a distance, now from our guest room with the door closed, and soon from another continent. It's all funneled through words on my screen.

I love words. Through e-mail, all of these huge feelings are translated into manageable little bricks. The things they together build and represent may be enormous and chaotic and over
whelming, but as pieces they're not too big, not too much, not too wild. I know what to do with words, how to face them, then how to use them to respond. I already turn my feelings into words. The distance I'm creating by going away forces others normally close to me, normally within talking and touching distance, to do the same.

The night before the flight, I force myself to dress up and attend the service of Admission and Dismissal. I see people see me; I notice them notice that I'm here, in a prominent seat in the inner chapel. They smile, relieved for me that I've left the house.

The congregation then sifts down to become a smaller group for drinks after the service, then smaller again for a dinner party hosted by the former head chorister's mother. I'm quieter than usual, but still manage some chitchat, prompted by friends tossing me softball questions about books and music as those subjects are discussed around me. The teenagers are out together, for their own celebratory dinner elsewhere. Our young one is in another room, supposed to be falling asleep in front of a DVD of
The Empire Strikes Back—
but he loves watching it too much to sleep. It's just grown-ups around the table, so we can talk freely.

They all know, and, unlike after the hearing in January, no one pretends not to. It's lovely. They say kind things. The prosecution—now the loss of the prosecution—is a big subject, but not the only one. We ebb and flow, into it and away from it again. The conversation is balanced just the same as what's inside my head: Pittsburgh is there, prominently, but so is lots else. The difference between what's in me and what's outside of me used to be horribly uneven. In January, and also at my lonely low-point at the end of this summer, I was full with thinking about it, so inflated by the subject that it seemed to be pushing my skin outward, while outside of me few spoke of it at all. Now the stopper's been pulled, and the overflow
has leaked out of me. When the subject is shared among all of us, it's not nearly so overwhelming.

The dinner ends. We indulge, picking from ten different flavors of ice cream for dessert, amazed at how we're being spoiled.

The next morning, I fly.

I'd been in Pittsburgh nine months earlier for the hearing, but I hadn't looked around me. All I'd perceived then had been the individual insides of a few buildings, bounded by a robust winter.

I look at the city this time, compare it to home in Cambridge, and to my college years.

It's different from Cambridgeshire in being aggressively hilly instead of relentlessly flat, and in its typically colorful, northeastern-American autumn, compared to the drab browning of England's leaves.

It's different from 1992, in flashy renovations of the football stadium and Point State Park, and the addition of a massive convention center and riverside casino.

It's different from being here as a college student, in a rut around the neighborhoods of Oakland, Squirrel Hill, and Shadyside, and instead centered on life as a visitor and adult in a downtown hotel.
Maybe all of these self-consciously stylish restaurants are new, or maybe they were here before, and how would I know? I hardly came downtown at all back then.

On the taxi ride from the airport, eighteen hours since I left my house this morning, I keep my eyes open for that moment that the downtown skyline appears. You can tell Pittsburgh from other cities by the mirrored turrets of Pittsburgh Plate Glass, a childishly simple, castle-themed skyscraper. I remember, as a student in my parents' car, loving the suddenness of that view, how completely the city appears, all at once.

The newspaper outside my hotel room door Monday morning has this headline, above the fold, on the front page:
LEGAL TITANS TO TUSSLE IN CYANIDE HOMICIDE TRIAL.
Evan was right; that's where the attention is.

I've been e-mailing with Georgia. She canceled her Pittsburgh plans when the case was withdrawn, and I let her know that I'd kept mine. I encourage her to come to Pittsburgh, too. I'm glad to be here.

Evan meets me in the hotel's grand lobby, under sparkly chandeliers. He is, of course, in a dark suit, white shirt, power tie: lawyer uniform. I'm wearing the blazer I'd always planned to testify in, but with jeans, because there's no jury to judge the appropriateness of my clothes. I even have on red lipstick, instead of pink. It's freeing not to have to worry about how I'm coming across.

I've already told Evan that I want to see the courthouse, so he walks me straight there, just a couple of blocks away. Their security is a much less rigorous version of what I'd passed through yesterday when leaving from Heathrow and changing planes in Charlotte. I get to keep my shoes on! And my jacket! It feels positively welcoming.

Evan points out where the entrance used to be a floor higher, before the city was regraded. The whole morning, he alternates be
tween tour-guide-ish architectural commentary, behind-the-scenes life-of-an-assistant-district-attorney details, and talking about our trial, what might have been. He knows that I like information, and he's generous with it.

I see his office, for the five “child abuse” (and related crimes) ADAs, five desks mashed together in a very small room, the tightness of which is compensated for by very large windows with good city views. His boss's desk is one of those five, and the nameplate on it tells me that she's Jan Necessary, the excellent and excellently named prosecutor from the transcript Evan had given me over the summer. Evan gestures toward a leather jacket over the back of a chair, and says, “Aprill's here.”

It's partly because of Aprill that I was able to overcome embarrassment over wanting to come to Pittsburgh anyway. When she'd said that she regretted having started this prosecution, for my sake and Georgia's, I'd thought,
Don't you dare wish away what I did get.
It's bad enough that this is stopping here, but it would be worse to lose any of the rest of it. Hoping to comfort her had made me feel like I might be needed here, not just allowed.

My preparation for seeing the courthouse had consisted of photos, mostly of the grand staircase and its archways and lamps. Evan's tour takes me instead up and down the back stairs, into the busy, overflowing offices that are the stages of an attorney's progress up the ranks. Boxes and files are everywhere. I ask him if my file will be destroyed. He promises that it will be stored.

He takes me toward the courtrooms. The building's wide corridors, which in the artsy photos are solemn and empty, are full of stressed-out, waiting people, mashed together like the attorneys' desks. They're everywhere. They're bored. They're not allowed to use their phones here, on floors three or five, where all of the courtrooms are. In front of us, a leg-shackled defendant shuffles alongside an escorting officer. Behind us, Kevin, my prosecutor from January's
hearing, catches up. It turns out that he's one of the two “legal titans” prosecuting the cyanide case. He's welcoming and glad to see me, but understandably distracted. The newspaper had said that he would be calling “about 60 witnesses” and “laying out evidence police obtained through more than 80 search warrants.” I'm ridiculously proud of him, “my” prosecutor, even if for only one day in January.

Later, I'll tease Evan in front of his fiancée that Kevin hadn't minded me swearing on the stand. Evan will start to explain that it's different with a jury, and I'll assure him that I know, I know. It's just funny. Evan is careful in his speech, to avoid bad habits that could pop out in court. He says just “bull” not “bullshit”; he calls the defense from my hearing an “ass” not “asshole.” It's sweet. He adores his job. He's not ambitious at the moment to get any higher, to judge, for example, because he likes what he gets to do now. He likes his role in court. He gets to argue against crimes that really deserve it.

The courtrooms, each one belonging to a different judge, are as chaotic inside as the corridor. No juries are in them yet, but things are already happening, in small clusters: motions and postponements and paperwork. Evan needs to find the defense for a case that's supposed to happen today, but which he thinks is going to be put off. Even with all of that going on, he points out to me the historic half-electric, half-flame chandelier in one courtroom, and other touristy details. No one even glances at us. Everyone has their own urgent business. Everyone's talking at once.

We finally get to what would have been my courtroom. Aprill's there, waiting to testify in a different case. This judge is part of the county's sex-crimes specialty court. Aprill must testify in this room a lot.

She seems surprised and nervous to see me. “You're here already?” she asks. Her mood makes me realize the power that I have
over her, as the wronged victim. I'm the judge of whether attempting this prosecution was worth it. But there's no chance to talk more right now.

Evan shows me everyone's seats as they would have been: his, with either Aprill or Dan, at one table, then the defense and Fryar at the other. He brings me to the witness stand as my seat, though it would only have been my seat for less than an hour. It's next to the judge on one side and the jury on the other. Evan walks me to the jury box's other end, where he would have stood to ask the questions, in order to have forced me to look at them when I answered, just by looking at him. From there, he'd also have known if they could hear everything. He repeats something he'd said to me when we practiced, about taking care of everything else. All I would have had to do was tell the truth, one answer at a time.

The room is buzzing with other people's work. It doesn't feel formal enough. It feels out of control. I like being a writer in part because I like quiet places. Nothing is still here. I'd thought a courtroom would feel like it's made of strong, clean rectangles, but this one feels like sparks and swirls.

Out from the overwhelming courtroom, back into the overwhelming corridor. We visit the room where jurors wait, with vending machines and a sign on the inside of the door reminding them
DO NOT GO INTO THE HALLWAY
unless they've been specifically dismissed for lunch or for the day. Near to that room is the “bullpen” where the defendants wait. There's a special back entrance so that there's no chance of jurors seeing any of them arriving with their shackles still on.

Evan's case is postponed, as he'd thought it would be. He finds the detective who had been supposed to testify, to send him home. That detective rolls his eyes when Evan tells him that he'll have to help bring in a certain witness next time, a child. Afterward I ask what the guy's problem was, and Evan says, “I know, right? You saw
that?” I think I'm lucky that my police and my lawyers like each other.

We go for a walk. The Point, where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers converge to make the Ohio River, is one of my favorite spots. The park has been significantly renovated since my time, and the fountain shoots up a neck-stretching 150 feet. Evan points out the new football stadium and new casino across the water, and the church up on Mount Washington where he's getting married next month. Predictably, we talk about weddings, and gambling, and sports. It's a game day, and all over town we see people in Steelers jerseys.

Evan tells me that he and his fiancée are going to watch the game on TV tonight, and get pizza. Would I like to come over to their apartment then?

I spend a lot of time with polite people, and it often takes something extra to get me to believe that I'm truly welcome, not just being treated nicely out of habit. This is that extra thing.

We go out for really good burgers, at a business-lunchy, all-of-the-customers-in-suits restaurant that Aprill later tells me Evan's colleagues got jealous about when he told them he'd taken me there.

Over sweet-potato fries, I tell him that we're okay, me and him, only because there are a lot of people in England and beyond who are really, really angry with him right now, for scuppering the case. One choir dad's leg shook when he talked about it. They're taking care of that emotion, so I don't have to be angry myself.

Evan says that he's angry, too.

Jet lag is getting to me. I droop while we wait for the waitress to take Evan's credit card. He walks me back to the hotel so that I can take a nap before the Steelers kick off.

Fryar was supposed to have been released “within forty-eight hours” of Evan dropping the case on Friday, but the jail doesn't re
lease on weekends. So, Fryar will have been released today, Monday, maybe while I was in the courthouse, or maybe while Evan and I ate lunch, or maybe while I was resting.

The “forty-eight hours” rule is a fairly recent improvement over the previous “forthwith,” meaning “immediately,” which had often resulted in prisoners being set free, unprepared, in the middle of the night. There's now an effort made to allow prisoners phone calls, help with a place to stay or a bus ticket, and three days' worth of meds. It's a kindness to the prisoners, but they're understandably impatient at the time it takes, and some chafe at the delay. A captain working at the Discharge and Release Center is quoted in the newspaper saying that the about-to-be-free are “like racehorses ready to go. They have no tolerance.”

Because Fryar had gone Christian in jail, he may have become part of a “pod” for prisoners interested in faith-based self-improvement. These prisoners are given mentors upon release. Fryar may actually have some support. He might be staying in Pittsburgh after all. Evan told me that he's not been taken back to New York, which I'd thought may have been required, a kind of extradition in reverse.

Whether Fryar's out and about here in Pittsburgh while I am, or later free in New York when I visit friends, family, and colleagues there, he's unlikely, Evan has pointed out, to ever cross my path. When is he going to be in the same shop as me? In the same hotel, or theater, or café? Evan's confident that class separates us almost as effectively as prison bars. He didn't say the word “class” out loud, but it was implied.

Of course, that didn't stop Fryar's life from intersecting with mine before. And what about: same church, same library, same park, same sidewalk? Still, I accept Evan's reassurance about the unlikelihood of a happenstance meeting, and I agree with him that Fryar is even less likely to purposely seek me out. There would be nothing in it for him.

Evan and his fiancée, Jessie, pick me up outside of my hotel. She's an immigration lawyer, so I presume that she, like Evan, has been in a suit most of the day. Right now, though, they're both in Steelers sweatshirts. They're ready to cheer on the home team.

We drive by a local pizza place to pick up an order on the way to their apartment. There's a salad already prepared on the kitchen counter, and in the fridge a six-pack of “seasonal” beers, from which I choose pumpkin-flavored.

I confess that I don't really watch football, and they explain the action patiently as things happen. Over commercials, we chat about my kids, and Evan and Jessie's upcoming wedding, and house hunting. Evan slips into Pittsburghese a couple of times and says “needs washed” and “needs fixed.”

I ask Jessie what she knows about my case, and the answer is “not much” beyond the basics, and the overall legalities of why it fell apart. Evan doesn't reveal personal details about the cases he represents, even to her, though he will speak generally. She said that it was weird, when they were first dating, to observe how he could talk so matter-of-factly about terrible things, even child abuse. He has to; she understands that. But Jessie herself has no poker face, and shows her emotions clearly. She had to learn that he does care and is affected, despite his neutral expression. He serves his cases better by remaining at a distance. She's the reason that he'd warned me, when we still had a case, that he would be distant during trial, even on break.

She's the one who reacts now when I talk about 1992, specifically about the hospital afterward, and the kind nurses. I keep thinking about them, and this week I bring them up with everyone: their sweet sadness over me, and that I tried to cheer them up, and that Bill's arrival made them blush. They're a Greek chorus backing up my tragedy. I tell it like a happy story, that there were so many kind, empathetic people, and Jessie looks upset herself. She looks sick to
hear it. Her face reminds me that it's actually a sad story. Well, it's both.