Authors: Emily Winslow
That's a relief, because the Pittsburgh end of things is suddenly frustrating again. The switch of prosecutors has thrown me. If I
hadn't asked, I wouldn't even know about it yet. I'm waiting to see if I get told the results of the meeting by tonight, and if I don't I'll push tomorrow morning. Aprill thinks it's her case, and Dan thinks it's his case, and Evan probably thinks it's his, but it's mine, mine and Georgia's. It's our case, us two, and they damn well should tell us what's going on. They might be waiting for news from the meeting today before reaching out, but the change in ADA is big enough news on its own to have warranted contact.
I decide not to e-mail the picture of young, graduating me after all. There's no point, not when the new prosecutor hasn't even met now-me. I feel distant from Aprill and Dan again, as if mine is not nearly an interesting enough case to matter. Bill doesn't need the photo; he knew me then. Then I think that I might send it to Bill anyway, because he only knew me from the hospital, and I was probably a mess.
My husband, Gavin, is in court himself today, testifying as an expert witness in a patent dispute in Texas. He's not a party to the dispute, so there's no winning or losing at stake for him personally, but it's a responsibility that he takes seriously and he believes in the side he's on. He's never been in court before, and neither have I, not even for jury duty. This year is a first for both of us.
I'm envious of the amount of prep he's been given: months of interaction with the lawyers, and, now, during the trial, debriefing and more prep every evening and morning. For my hearing, I'd been given less than a half hour.
Gavin gets the company attorneys in Texas to use some magical lawyerly access to find out for me the time that Fryar's arraignment has been scheduled for in Pittsburgh so that I'll know when I can start hoping for news. Goodness knows that the Pennsylvania lawyers actually working on Fryar's case haven't bothered to tell me exactly when today it's happening.
I wonder if, perhaps, like my friends here after the hearing, Kevin
and Evan do care, and just haven't gotten so far as to let me know. Perhaps they're like Dan, who needed his wife to let me in on him giving a damn. Maybe the world is full of secret caring, and I have to pry it out.
Finally, before the day is done, Kevin and Aprill both e-mail, without prompting from me. I'm immediately placated.
It's a familiar pattern. I vacillate between two states,
waiting
and
having,
and there's little gradient between the two.
Waiting
isn't a sea that gradually approaches a beach; it's a wet pit with vertical walls. Nearing resolution makes little difference to how it feels to be swimming in the waiting. There is only in, or out. In is agony; out is happy; the transition is sudden.
Now I'm pleased, magnanimous. Kevin's been prosecuting a throat slashing, then a bar shooting, back-to-back. Of course he hasn't had time to tell me about Evan, and it was kind of him to follow up with me when it isn't even his case anymore.
Besides the new prosecutor, he tells me, there's a new defense attorney. Fryar must have spent his last on the private defense for the hearing; he has a public defender now, a woman. I can't help but think that this may be safer for me, that a woman won't go after me on the stand in the same way that that man did, all folksy and fake-ignorant just to make a case. She will go after me, but I assume differently. Surely a woman won't be able to stomach accusing me that I don't really remember, right? Maybe she'll try to go after the evidence and the police, not me.
The assigned judge disappoints me a little. I look up some recent sentences she's given in similar cases, and she seems lenient. Gavin points out that even if Fryar does get out of prison someday, maybe that'll be even more punishing. Maybe being put out on the street in his eighties, after twenty years of highly supervised and regimented prison life, will be harder than just staying in. I perk up
at the idea that even getting out might hurt Fryar and I nod, even though we're on the phone and Gavin can't see me.
He's just come off the stand in Texas, and is calling me from outside the courtroom. He sounds wired, like he's had way too much coffee. He's just been cross-examined and it's the end of the day there. He'll get some food and an hour's nap, then go back with the lawyers into the “war room,” a pair of hotel conference rooms that they've commandeered, to prep for cross-examining the other side's expert tomorrow and for closing arguments.
I look up flights. Kevin's told me that my trial is set to begin June 3, which is right up against the end of S.'s choir trip to a festival in Switzerland, which I'm chaperoning.
I worry that I might be asked to step down from the trip, because of the proximity of the trial, if anyone thinks that I'll be perhaps too emotional or affected to focus on the kids. I have to ask the Director of Music about skipping the bus trip that will take the choir from London City Airport back to Cambridge, so that I can go straight on to Pittsburgh instead, and I worry over what his reply might be. He quickly assures me that the adult-to-kids ratio for the bus leg is fine even without me, because when he's not conducting he can count as a chaperone. He doesn't acknowledge the trial at all, though I'd explained that that was the reason for my travel plans.
The mother of the trip's youngest chorister only wonders how I'll manage to pack enough nice clothes for both Switzerland and Pittsburgh at once, and brainstorms with me a schedule of hotel dry cleaning: half near the end of our time in Basel and half on my arrival in the States. The choir admin insists that I must splurge on an upgrade to business class for the long Pittsburgh journey. People pounce upon the practical, and take it for granted that I'll be my usual self. I get to keep Switzerland, and I hug it close with both hands.
British tact, which had hurt me so much when I came back from the hearing, is now working in my favor.
I get to Skype with my new ADA and he talks to me for more than an hour, with video on so that it's more like really meeting each other. Evan's just thirty years old. He's sweet and friendly, and so clean-shaven that he looks like he can't even grow a beard. He's worked in the district attorney's office for four years, after a three-year internship. He prosecutes mostly rapes and child abuse.
I tell him that I like information. He gives it to me.
He explains the possible sentence ranges ahead and what can affect the outcome. There's a Pennsylvania chart of recommended sentence lengths that the judge will use, with crimes listed down the page in decreasing order of their severity, each defined by a number called an Offense Gravity Score. My three biggest charges each have a score of twelve, near to murder, which is rated fourteen.
The crimes have recommended minimum/maximum sentences stated in months. Just the quick calculation of dividing by twelve
distances the impact of those time spans, makes them feel less like real years.
Besides choosing sentences within those ranges, the judge will have further leeway to decide if the sentences for each charge should be served consecutively, which could add up to a lot, or concurrently, which means overlapping the accumulated sentences: say, serving multiple ten-year sentences in a single decade. The judge we've been assigned is a sex-crimes specialist who's tried a lot of similar cases, and I can see from past results reported in the newspapers that she habitually prefers middle-of-the-road sentence lengths. Our only hope for significant prison time is to raise Fryar's Prior Record Score (PRS).
The PRS reflects convictions for crimes committed before the crimes on trial took place. In 1977, in Orange County, New York, Fryar was convicted for second-degree rape. He served the maximum seven years, in Sing Sing. I look on a map, finding the county, the prison, and his high school town, Beacon, all upstate. These map dots cluster around my old musical-theater summer camp. In the early eighties, while I was a young teenager knitting and paddle boating between rehearsals, dancing badly in the choruses of musicals and acting well in the plays, he was in prison just two hours away.
Evan is waiting for details of this conviction before he can officially raise Fryar's PRS from zero to, we hope, four. A higher PRS will bump his crimes into a different category of recommended sentences, longer ones. But, as with the extradition, New York is making communication difficult. Pennsylvania has to purchase this information. The process takes time.
The other thing that Evan is waiting for is the possibility of a guilty plea. I still don't think it's in Fryar's nature to make one; he fought even just the extradition, which the detectives tell me they've never seen anyone do before. But our case is solid and Evan
tells me that the defense attorney has brought up the possibility. It would be in Fryar's favor to do it, to admit it all, act sorry, and try to get an easier sentence. If he does plead, the process changes dramatically for me.
If Fryar continues to fight and we go to trial, my job will be to testify to what he did. I'm ready for that. If he pleads, he will still go to prison, just as with a jury conviction, but his admission will override any need for my testimony. All that will be left for me to do is to give my “impact statement,” in hope of influencing sentencing. That's not what I want. Testimony is about what he did; an impact statement is about me.
I shouldn't have to display my grief. It's demeaning. It tells the man, “Look how powerful and significant you are. Look how fundamentally you changed my life.” I shouldn't be forced to tell him that, and certainly not in public. I shouldn't have to give that to him.
Evan knows what I want, but Fryar has the right to plead. Evan could refuse to negotiate a plea (that is, Fryar could dangle a plea as a possibility if Evan will go low enough for him with an offered sentence), but a general plea, which is an unconditional admission of guilt that leaves the sentence up to the judge, can't be rejected. Evan tries to see the good side of the possibility. Even with as great a case as we have, it takes just one juror to scupper things, while a plea is a guarantee.
I mentally shrug. Another good thing, I know, is that a plea would prove, to anyone wondering, that he really did do it. I can see how in some cases this would be a significant plus; in this one, though, it's irrelevant. No one is on the fence about what really happened.
The last possible good I had hoped for was allocution, which is the recounting of the crime by the defendant, in support of a guilty plea. Some jurisdictions insist on it. If I could hear what he did from his point of view, perhaps even learn why and when he chose me, and which specific memories were significant enough to
him that he's held on to them, that might be a worthy trade-off, to lose my testimony. But Aprill has told me that Allegheny County has no such requirement attached to a plea, just that he agree to his charges. I'm never going to know.
Maybe to prepare me, but probably just to placate me, Evan talks about testifying, just in case.
It will be very different from Gavin's experience prepping for trial as an expert witness. I had assumed that the reason witnesses in civil trials are so much more thoroughly prepared than those in criminal trials is just money; a private company has a lot more to spend than government prosecutors do. But, Evan tells me, that isn't the only reason. Eyewitnesses and expert witnesses serve different purposes. Experts are there to analyze and present considered opinions; preparation makes them appear responsible. Eyewitnesses, on the other hand, are to answer questions simply and directly, from their memories. Too much preparation can seem distancing or even dishonest. Criminal-trial juries want to hear eyewitness testimony that's being pulled from memory right in front of them, not that's been memorized, even if what's memorized had come out of memory first.
As with Kevin at the hearing, with Evan too everything physical will have to be spelled out. Each charge is very specific about which body part was exactly where. The foreplay bits sound terribly silly when described so precisely.
Evan tells me that the main difference between testimony at trial and testimony at the hearing is that trial testimony will be stretched out. Instead of allowing me a continuous narrative, he'll interrupt to dig for details. I'm fine with that. I want to tell everything.
But he says that he'll also have to ask me how I felt then, each step of the way. That's what juries want to know: not just what Fryar did but how I felt about it as it happened. The jury will want to know what it meant to me.
Prurient bastards.
No, I don't mean the individuals, who haven't even been chosen yet; I mean the collective organism
jury
that apparently requires that I be a perfect little broken princess if they're going to reward me with a conviction. I say this as someone who comes pretty close to being that version of so-called perfect: a devout and sober virgin when it happened, now a married mother. But if I say he
fucked
me, then forget it, apparently. While Evan sympathizes with my raised-voice response to the defense attorney at the hearing, he says that I mustn't swear at trial. Juries don't like it. I have to make an idiot of myself and say, precisely, “He put his penis into my vagina,” as if anyone can say that without sounding like a goddamn idiot. It's fucking ridiculous.
As for pressing me for how I felt, I think Evan's worried that I won't show emotion on the stand. I know that that won't be a problem; I almost fainted at the hearing. But I can see that my disdain for the impact statement has made him worry. I start to think that maybe I need to display even now, on the phone, how upset I am (but without swearing!); that I should, to reassure him, make a show of grief and fragility (but not anger!). I don't, but in the end I'm worrying that I should have. Maybe I shouldn't have put on makeup for this call. Maybe I shouldn't have been polite and chipper. Maybe I shouldn't have my hair touched up just before trial, or buy new clothes. If people think that I'm too lucky, or too happy, or too strong, they might decide that what Fryar did is irrelevant. They might think that I don't need anything, that I don't need him punished.
That's what the impact statement is for. They're going to make me beg for it.
Gavin had said he was going to watch just one more show and then go upstairs. My Skype with Evan went longer than I expected, so I assume that Gavin's in bed. He's not, though. He's waited up for me.
I tell him that I need to write an e-mail and will join him soon.
I attach my graduation picture to a thank-you note to Evan. He should know how young I was then. Then I worry more, that that happy, proud smile will just add to him thinking that what happened didn't matter. I worry that he won't understand.
Gavin fusses in the kitchen, tidying dishes and doting on the cats. I can't concentrate with him so near. That's one of the reasons I don't want him to accompany me to trial. Everyone else who's there for me, Bill and Dan and Aprill and Evan, are all people I define purely in relation to the prosecution. Gavin, though, is three-dimensional to me. I can't reduce him to just my support system. I would worry about how hard it is for him to listen to me tell these things. I'd want to look after him, or feel guilty that I couldn't.
I resist the urge to shoo him upstairs now, and let him continue to hover. I don't need his companyâany companyâright at this moment, but I need it in general and now is when it's here. I finish up the e-mail and hit send.
He doesn't ask about the call; he just walks up with me, and lies down with me. I tell him bits in the dark, about the Prior Record Score and the likelihood of a guilty plea. We talk about hotels and airplane tickets, and about how
something
will happen in court on June 3âwhich is still two months awayâwhether it's the start of a trial or a formal admission of guilt.
It's perfect that Gavin's court case happened when it did, just now, just before my own. It gives him a vocabulary with which to talk about my case, and something to compare it to. Even though he was just a hired expert, not an accused or accuser, his technical knowledge had become the focus of the case. Closing arguments had literally come down to the other side claiming that Gavin's testimony was biased and couldn't be trusted, while the lead attorney on Gavin's side told the jury that Gavin is “a good man.” Gavin's side won in the end, and relief had busted out of him in tears when he phoned me.
There had been literally twelve attorneys on his side, and he's grateful to each one, emotionally so. That's the biggest plus to me, that Gavin now understands that bond. I feel the same for my team, for Bill and Dan and Aprill and Evan and Kevin and honestly anyone else who shows up in court and is kind to me. They mean the world to me.
Before the prosecution, I would have listed “affectionate,” “brilliant,” and “kind” as Gavin's most attractive attributes, but “confident” has emerged as the most significant and relevant of his virtues this year. He supports my many friendships with both men and women. He's grateful for John's kindness and attention to me. He understands that we can't do this by ourselves.
He was unruffled when I went away to the hearing alone, though the situation could have been viewed awkwardly, my getting emotionally attached to a team that's mostly men, our bonding over a sex crime. I'm grateful that I didn't have to persuade or coddle him. He just trusted me. If he had any discomfort from my choices, he set it aside.
Now, though, he doesn't have to overlook any nagging unease, should it exist; he can just understand. He's felt it himself. We're attached now, me and Bill and Dan and Aprill and Evan and Kevin. We're part of each other, something I feel more than they do, much more; but it's real, however skewed its balance may be.
I think about what I wrote twenty-two years ago: “New memories. Wouldn't that be nice? To think of, say, my hands, and think of someone nice instead of him. But wouldn't it be even better to look at my hands and see my hands, to think of my body and think of myself? Must my hands, my body, always make me think of a man, even if someday a nice one?”
I'd wanted to see myself as just my own, and felt that Fryar had taken that possibility away from me, that the best that I was left with afterward was to cover his touch with someone else's, someone
good. All I could do was add; nothing could take him away. I would never be “just me” again.
Now I wonder. I don't think that I ever really had that option of being just myself, even before. Life isn't like that. I look at myself and I see touches from everywhere. Not just sex and giving birth, though those are obvious highlights. I feel tangled up with everyone around me. It's a good tangle; it's life; it's everyone I've ever known. The detectives and attorneys are in there now, part of who I see when I look at myself, with my family and my friends, from then and now, and my lean, handsome, brilliant, gentle Cambridge man, with
that accent,
lying next to me. There's room for all of them, and for many more. I was a virgin when Fryar got to me, but I was never untouched. I'd been mixed up with other people's lives from the day I was born.
With the hope of allocution lost, I have to accept that no one is ever going to tell me about Fryar. Aprill hardly knows anything, just that Fryar's girlfriend has broken up with him. I noticed at the hearing, when discussion turned to bail, that Fryar claimed to be living off government benefits as a disabled veteran. That's all I have.
I've always been mystified by people who want to climb already conquered mountains or dive deep into well-known seas; that sort of thing just seems dangerous and uncomfortable to me. But I have complete sympathy for anyone who wants to discover something. Pushing deep into a jungle seeking the ruins of a rumored legendary city seems perfectly sensible to me; in fact, necessary. Wanting to figure out what's really there and how I fit in with it is a primal urge. Fryar's name is my crumpled treasure map.