I have reserved the conference room for this meeting. Pour people make my office seem a little close, especially under the circumstances. Andy and I take the east side of the table.
His former lover and her lawyer sit directly opposite from us. I do not offer coffee and Cokes. If they want something, they can ask for it. Andy is wearing a light gray suit with one of those wild, flowered ties in fashion that I can’t bring my self to buy. Even Morris, no clotheshorse either, is wearing one. Andy looks everywhere in the room except at the face of the woman he told me he loved. Maybe he, too, is finally having second thoughts about Olivia’s innocence.
Though I have requested this meeting, Karen begins it by asking me if I think Olivia should consider taking the Fifth Amendment and not testifying, which is another way of asking me if I have any knowledge that her client bears some criminal responsibility for what happened. Though she doesn’t practice criminal law, nobody has ever said Karen was dumb. She is not bad-looking for a real estate lawyer.
In addition to being as tall as her client, she looks around the mouth and eyes like that goofy movie star Geena Davis. She has the advantage of being able to claim relative ignorance.
Even if my client can’t bear to take a good look at his former lover, I can and do. She looks damn nice. Her hair, longer than the last time I saw her, is tightly permed. Her long legs, shaped by black tights under a short teal-green skirt, make her look sexier than I remembered. I guess if I were a woman and knew I was going to be on the front page of every news paper in the state the day after tomorrow, I’d go shopping and to the beauty parlor, too. Now that I’ve been handed this opportunity, I say, “I’m beginning to wonder, Karen. This morning I was told that your client” I watch Olivia’s face “years ago gave up another child she had abused.”
“That’s not true!” Olivia says, jerking her head sharply in my direction. But there is no mistaking she has been caught off guard. I turn and look at Andy who has become rigid in his chair. Behind his lenses, his eyes, more cinnamon than brown today, are wide and staring like a startled child’s, reflecting a mixture of anxiety, surprise, and fear. For once I have shocked him.
“Who told you that?” Olivia demands, her voice shrill with anger.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” I say, only half lying.
“I don’t think Andy or I knew you had another child, Olivia.”
“I knew about her son,” Andy says weakly. It is clear from his tone, though, that he hasn’t been told everything.
“It wasn’t child abuse; it was an accident,” Olivia says, her voice urgent and loud.
“He pulled a pan of water off the stove. I was going through a bad time then and was drinking a lot. In fact, by then I had become a full-fledged alcoholic.”
This admission does not come easy, and Olivia looks at me with undisguised resentment.
I do not quite shrug in disbelief, but I do not want Andy to think Olivia should be allowed to worm out of this one so easily.”
“Is that all?” I ask, indicating by my tone that I know more.
“Val had had a couple of accidents before this, and in my condition I couldn’t handle going through some kind of child-abuse proceeding, so I let my mother in Ohio take him, and that’s where he is today.”
What a great mother you’ve been, I think.
“How come you’ve never tried to get him back?” I ask, drawing the battle lines between us.
“Children and Family Services would have worked with you. Both state and federal law requires them to work to rehabilitate the family.”
“Val is happy where he is,” she says, her voice without a trace of warmth. I have found her guilty of abuse even if there is no court order.
“I see him whenever I can.”
I am the enemy now, and that is okay with me. I don’t like her much either. I say to Karen, “I don’t know if Jill Marymount knows this yet or not.”
Karen’s slightly round face appears deflated by this turn of events. This is more than she bargained for.
“Is this admissible?”
she asks me.
“It might well be,” I say, sensing Andy’s discomfort. He has begun to squirm in his seat like a small child who needs to use the toilet. Perhaps this revelation will be like replacing a distorted pane of glass in his bathroom mirror, and when Andy takes a hard look at himself tomorrow morning he might see a different man.
“I want to testify,” Olivia says, her jaw set, but her words sound brittle as if she has begun to doubt that she is still in control of her own fate.
Karen says in a low voice intended to soothe her client.
“We can talk about it later.” Olivia barely nods, and Karen, her gray-green eyes narrowing with obvious distaste at the question she is about to ask, says to me,”
“What are you going to say in your opening statement? Will you admit their affair?”
I look over at Andy who is studying a blank spiral note book he has brought in with him.
“I don’t see how it can be avoided,” I say, beginning to warm to the role of themes senger of bad news. If Olivia doesn’t testify, by the time we get to closing argument I can consider pointing a finger at her, possibly without running too great a risk that the jury will find the remaining fingers are pointed at my client. I justify this decision by saying, “If Andy is going to stay out of prison or worse, the jury will have to trust him. If he tries to hide anything, it will be extremely difficult for them to accept him, given that most or all of them will be white and will suspect a relationship anyway. His credibility is every thing in this case.” Without having said so, I have implied her client has none.
Olivia’s long, sensuous face dips slightly, as if she knew this part of the story wouldn’t be left on the cutting- room floor. Remembering her coldness at the probable cause hearing I ask her, “If you do testify tomorrow, how reluctant a witness are you going to be?”
Instead of looking at me, Olivia stares at Andy as she answers, “I had no intention of hurting Andy’s case last time.” “But you did,” I reply, not bothering to conceal my anger.
This is ground that Olivia and I have covered before, but it can’t hurt to remind her.
“When I questioned you, your manner suggested you wanted to put as much distance as you possibly could between your own participation and what occurred.”
“That’s understandable,” Andy says, gently rebuking me. “Olivia was not only angry at me but also upset at herself.”
Since he has been in the same room with her, his large and soulful eyes, the color of pennies found on a river bank, have become melancholy.
“It may be understandable,” I say, irritated by his defense of her, ‘but she’s got to be a hell of a lot more forthcoming next time or she shouldn’t testify at all.”
There is an air of unreality in the room. We might as well be rehearsing Our Town for the high school senior class play.
More sullen than she has a right to be, Olivia asks, “How specific do I have to get?”
With her Queen of England attitude, this woman is fast getting on my nerves. I explode at her: “Tomorrow’s going to be the second most horrible day in your lives! Jill Marymount will eat you alive, and the judge is going to let her, no matter how many objections I make, so you better be prepared to be pretty goddamned specific if you want to come out of this with any credibility. You’re going to need an explanation for everything that both of you did starting from the day you met and ending with this meeting today, and if you’re not prepared to do that, you better keep off the witness stand.”
For the first time since I met her, Olivia looks scared, as if she is about to cry. I can’t say that I blame her. I can’t always explain my own life even to myself, much less to the people I love. How much more difficult would it be for her to have to justify her life to twelve people, some of whom will regard her as an evil witch as soon as Jill finishes her opening statement. Pour boiling water on one child and then give him up? Put her other child in an institution? Have her shocked? Love a man (a black one, for God’s sake!) who is willing to send enough electricity into the child’s body to kill her? Even if you forget the damn money, how innocent can she be if she is willing to admit to all of that? If I didn’t dislike Olivia so much, I’d feel sorry for her.
My speech gets some results, after a bit of hemming and hawing, and for the next two hours I get to play the role of Jill Marymount and ask every question I can think of that will incriminate either of them. When I am finished, I don’t have a clue as to what a jury will do with Olivia’s testimony, but at least she has a complete
