you is that the half dozen jurors who were furiously taking notes during Derek’s direct testimony had put down their pens now. Some were no longer even looking at him; they had dropped their eyes to their laps. Maybe Jonathan had won the day and they had decided to discount Derek’s testimony entirely. But it did not seem that way. It seemed like I had been fooling myself, and for the first time I began to imagine in realistic terms what it would be like when Jacob was in Concord prison.
35
Driving home from court that day I was morose, and my sadness infected Jacob and Laurie. From the start, I had been the steady one. It upset them, I think, to see me lose hope. I tried to lie for them. I said all the usual things about not feeling too up on a good day or too down on a bad day; about how the prosecution’s evidence always looks worse on first sight than it does later, in the context of the whole case; about how juries are impossible to anticipate and we should not read too much into their every little gesture. But my tone gave me away. I thought we had probably lost the case that day. At a minimum, the damage was enough that we would have to present a real defense. It would be foolish to rely on “reasonable doubt” at this point: the story Jacob had written about the murder read like a confession, and try as he might, Jonathan could not disprove Derek’s testimony that Jacob wrote it. I did not admit any of this. There was nothing to gain by telling the truth, so I didn’t. All I said to them was that “It wasn’t a good day.” But that was enough.
Father O’Leary did not appear to watch over us that night, or anyone else. We Barbers were left in complete isolation. If we had been shot out into space, we could not have felt more alone. We ordered Chinese food, as we had a thousand times the last few months, because China City delivers and the driver speaks so little English that we did not have to feel self-conscious opening the door for him. We ate our boneless spare ribs and General Gao’s chicken in near silence, then slunk off to opposite corners of the house for the evening. We were too sick of the case to talk about it anymore but too obsessed with it to talk about anything else. We were too gloomy for the idiocies of TV-suddenly our lives seemed finite, and much too short to waste-and too distracted to read.
Around ten, I went into Jacob’s room to check on him. He lay on his back on the bed.
“You okay, Jacob?”
“Not really.”
I went over and sat on the side of the bed. He hoisted his butt over to make room, but Jake was getting so big there was hardly enough space for both of us. (He used to lie right on my chest for naps when he was a baby. He had been no bigger than a loaf of bread.)
He rolled onto his side and propped his head on his hand. “Dad, can I ask you something? If you thought things were looking bad, like the case was about to go the wrong way, would you tell me?”
“Why?”
“No, not ‘why’; just, would you tell me?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Because it wouldn’t make sense to-well, if I took off, what would happen to you and Mom?”
“We’d lose all our money.”
“They’d take away the house?”
“Eventually. We put it up as security on your bail.”
He considered this.
“It’s just a house,” I told him. “I wouldn’t miss it. It doesn’t matter as much as you.”
“Yeah, but still. Where would you guys live?”
“Is this what you’ve been lying here thinking about?”
“A little bit.”
Laurie came to the door. She folded her arms and leaned on the doorpost.
I said, “Where would you go?”
“Buenos Aires.”
“Buenos Aires? Why there?”
“It just sounds like a cool place.”
“Says who?”
“There was an article about it in the Times. It’s the Paris of South America.”
“Hm. I didn’t know South America had a Paris.”
“It is in South America, right?”
“Yeah, it’s in Argentina. You may want to do a little more research before you run off there.”
“Is there a-whaddaya call it? — a treaty, like a fugitive treaty?”
“An extradition treaty? I don’t know. I guess that’d be another thing you’d want to check out first.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“How would you pay for the ticket?”
“I wouldn’t. You would.”
“And a passport? You surrendered yours, remember?”
“I’d get a new one somehow.”
“Just like that? How?”
Laurie came and sat on the floor beside the bed and stroked his hair. “He’d sneak across the border into Canada and he’d get a Canadian passport.”
“Hm. Not sure it’s actually that easy, but okay. So what would you do once you got to Buenos Aires, which we know is in Argentina?”
Laurie said, “He’d dance the tango.” Her eyes were wet.
“Do you know how to dance the tango, Jacob?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly, he says.”
“Not exactly, like, meaning not at all.” He laughed.
“Well, you can get tango lessons in Buenos Aires, I would think.”
Laurie said, “In Buenos Aires, everybody knows the tango.”
“You’ll need someone to dance the tango with, won’t you?”
He smiled shyly.
Laurie said, “Buenos Aires is filled with beautiful women who dance the tango. Beautiful, mysterious women. Jacob will have his pick.”
“Is that true, Dad? Lots of beautiful women in Buenos Aires?”
“That’s what I hear.”
He lay back and laced his fingers behind his head. “This is sounding better and better.”
“What will you do there when you get done dancing the tango, Jake?”
“Go to school, I guess.”
“I pay for that too?”
“Of course.”
“And after school?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be a lawyer like you.”
“Don’t you think you’ll want to keep a low profile? You know, being a fugitive and all?”
Laurie answered for him. “No. They’re going to forget all about him and he’s going to have a long, happy, wonderful life in Argentina with a beautiful woman who dances the tango, and Jacob will be a great man.” She got up on her knees so she could look at his face and continue to stroke his hair as he lay there. “He’ll have children, and his children will have children, and he’ll bring so much happiness to so many people that no one will ever believe that once upon a time in America people said horrible things about him.”
Jacob closed his eyes. “I don’t know if I can go to court tomorrow. I just don’t want to do it anymore.”
“I know, Jake.” I laid my palm on his chest. “It’s almost over.”
