story.
“Are you in love,” I finish up, as mockingly as I can, “with the defendant at this very moment?”
Love! The burdens we place on that word. Olivia, exhausted as we all are, shakes her head.
“I don’t know how I feel anymore.”
At one time I would have believed her, but no longer. I now think she has manipulated Andy every step of the way.
Her past has grown too long. Honesty, a scantily clad virtue usually born of necessity, is Andy’s only hope. The trouble is that people lie so much it is hard to recognize the truth when it appears. Without enthusiasm, I follow Olivia’s rehearsal with an abbreviated reprise of my opening statement: “Whether you approve of it or not, ladies and gentlemen, this is what happened and why it happened….” On the assumption she will testify as she has rehearsed, I summarize many of the events from Olivia’s perspective, but barely mention the issue of race. If I can put enough of a tragic spin on Olivia’s story, perhaps the white women on the jury (and they should be in the majority) will empathize with her enough to realize that if their circumstances had been different, they could have been faced with the same choices.
Though I do not say it (so as not to set off Andy), I firmly believe white women are less racist than white men.
By six o’clock, when we have finished, the emotional climate in the room precludes idle chitchat. Olivia looks as if she has learned she has two months to live, and Andy doesn’t seem much better. Saying goodbye in the conference room, I let Andy escort Karen and Olivia to the elevators and go look for Morris. He is in my office, on the phone, with his feet propped up on my desk. Barely glancing up at me, he continues his conversation, apparently to someone in one of his businesses in Atlanta. I wonder if I’m paying for his calls.
His speech is laced with the most profane epithets and scatological references imaginable. Yet at this moment I’d rather talk to him than to his brother.
When Andy returns a moment later, he tells me he wants to talk to me, and we return to the conference room and sit down on opposite sides of the table.
“Why didn’t you tell me,” he demands, his voice angry, “what you were going to say to Olivia?”
I am sick of his defending her, but I keep my voice level.
“I didn’t want you to tip her off. As far as I’m concerned she’s still got a lot of explaining to do.” At this moment Morris walks in and sits down beside me. It is as if he and I are the relatives in this case.
“She doesn’t owe you the time of day,” Andy says, his voice more hostile than I’ve ever heard it.
“Her life’s been a living hell, and all you can do is try to set her up.” Quickly, for Morris’s benefit, he recounts Olivia’s latest problems.
Morris, who has nervously begun to drum the table with the knuckles of his right hand, stops.
“You’re still fucking the bitch,” he says sharply, “aren’t you, brother?”
As if charged with electricity, Andy’s eyelids flutter twice, as obvious as a stammer.
“Hell, no.”
The hell he isn’t! I can’t believe I have been so stupid. By the way Olivia had been acting, I was certain they weren’t seeing each other.
“Of course, he is!” I say to Morris, jabbing his arm with my finger.
“She’s still playing him like a goddamn violin.” Why didn’t I see this? Andy’s so pussy whipped he can’t remember his own name. Needlessly, I add, “She couldn’t manipulate him any better if he were a hand puppet.”
Morris shakes his head mournfully at his brother.
“You stupid, stupid little nigger.”
Andy pushes back from the table and in an agonized tone, pleads, “Can’t either of you understand that I love this woman? Olivia’s gone through more in the last sixteen years than most people endure their entire lives. Neither of you knows her at all!”
I look at this man, who is as intelligent as anybody I know, and wonder how he can possibly be this dumb. Black people have been getting screwed by whites in Arkansas for more than 150 years, but Andy is competing to be this year’s poster child.
“She’s about to love you to death,” I say, more to Morris than to him.
Morris chuckles ruefully, looking at his brother.
“The boy’s been fucked blind. The bitch could shoot six people dead, and you’d say her finger just got stuck while she was testing her gun.”
Andy stares balefully at his brother as if they were picking up an old argument. “I don’t really expect you to understand, Mo,” he says, his voice dropping to a whisper.
“You’ve always hated yourself as much as you hate whites.”
In a bored tone, Morris replies, “Now, don’t start trying to fuck with me, boy. I came to terms with myself a long time ago. I’m not gonna be the one with my pecker hanging out in the middle of the courtroom tomorrow.”
Anxious to avoid open warfare, I put my hand on Morris’s arm to restrain him.
“Andy, if there’s more to this than an accident,” I say quietly, “there’s still time to make a deal with Jill Marymount.”
With a look of utter disdain, Andy stalks out of the room.
Morris watches him go and surprises me by commenting after Andy is out of earshot, “He probably does love her.
He’s never happier than when he’s taking care of a cripple.”
I stand up and stretch. My back feels as if it has calcified since this morning. After this trial I’ve got to start getting some exercise again.
“I wish now I’d insisted that you sat in on this,” I say.
“I can’t figure her out, but I doubt if Olivia Le Master fits into the category of a cripple.”
Twisting his hands outward Morris pops a thick, hairy knuckle and stares at his fingers.
“Oh, I can see how the bitch could get all twisted.”
I walk over to the window and stare at the street. Morris has put me in my place-he doesn’t seem the compassionate type, but even he is willing to concede Olivia has had a hard time of it.
“Maybe so,” I admit, “but lots of people with retarded children don’t go to the extremes she has, and I’m not even talking about whether she’s guilty of murder.”
Morris scratches his sparse, graying hair.
“I don’t know,” he mutters softly, ‘you white folks don’t handle bad shit too good sometimes. When that silver spoon gets taken away from you, it’s mighty easy to get withdrawal symptoms.”
“Could be,” I shrug, unwilling to argue. As long as he is writing the checks, Morris is free to put a racial spin on whatever he wants. For all I know, he may be right. If you don’t expect much, you sure as hell can’t claim to be disappointed.
And yet there is his brother, who refuses to interpret anything through the lens of racism. Why should I be surprised?
We all do what works.
“You think Andy would let himself be talked into taking Pam’s life?” I ask, lowering my voice.
Morris stands and comes over to the window by me.
“He wouldn’t do it for the money,” he whispers, “but damned if he couldn’t think of a whole shit load of other reasons.”
I look down on the rapidly emptying street and think of the nightly preoccupations that await these people who are still scurrying out of the Layman Building. TV. Children.
Some will work. Maybe a few will even read a book. How many are going home to have sex outside of marriage with someone of a different race?
“What do you think your chances are?” Sarah asks. She had come into the kitchen for a glass of milk. As the product of a mixed marriage, Sarah would be the ideal person to try this case for Andy. She wouldn’t have to say a word to get across Andy’s point that race should not be an issue in this trial.
I look up from the table, which is covered with my papers.
Though I have nailed down their stories (Andy admits to five
