A Charmed Life (27 page)

Dolly put her hands to her ears. She did not want to hear any more. It was all true, no doubt; Sandy had convinced her. But these dreadful details, hammered home, had the effect of dividing her sympathies. “Why shouldn’t she hitchhike?” she said suddenly, in a clear stubborn voice. “My dear,
I
don’t mind,” said Sandy, smiling. “It’s what the judge will think. Hitchhiking is illegal in this state.” “But she can’t
afford
a taxi,” argued Dolly, striving to be composed and reasonable. “She should have thought of that before she missed the bus,” Sandy replied. “Everybody else got here. It’s no good feeling sorry for her. We’re all sorry for her; we’ve all tried to help her. She’s a tragic kid, really—a natural delinquent; no mother, father a drunkard, four stepmothers in a row. The leopard can’t change its spots.” He turned up Dolly’s coatsleeve and glanced at her watch.

“Look,” he said softly. “There she is now.” On the highway below them, a Nehi truck had stopped. Two children and a woman clambered out, waving to the driver. “Watch!” said Sandy, gripping Dolly’s arm, as the boy and girl raced across the road, without looking either way to see whether any cars were coming. “I wish the judge could have seen that,” he added, when they had safely crossed the road, followed by their mother. An afterthought struck him.
“You
saw it!” he cried, elatedly, tightening his hold on her arm. “Put it in your testimony. I’ll tell Barney to ask you about it.” “I couldn’t,” said Dolly faintly. Sandy had made her believe that she would not be harming Clover if she merely testified to his character; some of his best friends were going to be character-witnesses on
her
side, and he did not hold it against them. But now he wanted her to go further, and he dropped her arm impatiently when she tried to explain that she could not magnify this little incident on the road into criminal negligence. “I know, I know,” he said. “You ‘don’t want to take sides.’”

Hurt, Dolly made her way into the building; the court was sitting on the second floor. “Barney” had told her where to go, but she took the wrong staircase and got lost. She hated the lawyer and the effect he was having on Sandy. He kept warning Sandy that the courts favored the mother, and that Sandy would lose the case if he did not “get in there and fight.” He had been very short with Dolly, when Sandy had brought her to his office, to be rehearsed in her testimony. As soon as he heard that she had known Sandy only a month, he had slammed down his pencil. He pretended that Sandy had given him the impression that they had known each other before. When Dolly said no, firmly, he shot her a peculiar look and suggested that they
might
have known each other “in the big city.” “You being a painter and him being an art critic, it would stand to reason that you’d met.” “No,” Dolly had repeated, lowering her gaze. “I’m afraid your testimony won’t be of much help then,” he said irritably, shutting up a folder. “I
told
him that!” cried Dolly, indignant. “Oh, well,” sighed the lawyer. “Let’s take down what you’ve got. You never know what the judge will stand for. Unmarried, I take it,” he said, pulling a pad of yellow paper to him.

Contempt for her scruples, Dolly felt, underscored those last words and the measuring, smooth look that accompanied them. He
diagnosed
her, she inwardly protested—as if telling the truth were a symptom, like being unmarried, like, if he only knew it, her dainty, fainthearted canvases stacked against the wall, unfinished. She began to feel guilty, as though she had to explain herself. He wanted to know what she was doing here, out of season. Mentioning the Sinnotts, Dolly flushed. Because of Sandy, she had hardly seen them since the play-reading. She did not dare think what they would say if they knew she had let herself get involved in the custody suit. “Sinnott?” said the lawyer. “Oh yes, the girl in the nightgown. She’s back again, I hear.” Dolly nodded. “Come to think of it, you look kind of alike. Same type.” “We went to college together,” murmured Dolly, as if in extenuation. “Uh huh,” said the lawyer, writing. By the time she left the office and joined Sandy outside, on the motorcycle, she felt she had done wrong not to stretch her testimony a little. But when she told Sandy what had happened, saying that she was sorry, he wearily cut her off. “Why should you lie for me?” he said. “Barney didn’t expect that. It was just a misunderstanding.”

A janitor showed Dolly into the courtroom. Another case was being heard. She settled herself on a bench and peered around. On her left, at a little desk, was a man in a blue uniform with a star. High up, on a platform, at a long table, was the judge, a long-nosed man in a black robe, like a college professor’s. The witness stand, at his right, was empty; the judge was whispering with two men, who, Dolly presumed, were lawyers. On the far side of the room, by the window, stood Barney, looking out. “Divorce case,” a man next to Dolly informed her. When the testimony resumed, and a big black-haired woman took the stand, nobody paid any attention, except the judge and the two lawyers. People kept passing in and out, in desultory style, rather, Dolly thought, like tourists in a European church, where a droning mass was being said in one of the chapels. The proceedings seemed very lifeless; she had to strain her ears to catch what the witness was saying, in a monotone, like a lesson learned. It was a case, apparently, of wife-beating. “Two beautiful big black eyes,” she heard the witness intone, and the lawyer picked up the phrase and repeated it, like a chant. Then, before Dolly knew it, the case was over, and the man in the blue uniform was calling their case: Alexander Gray against Clover Gray. Nearly everybody in the courtroom moved forward, past a brass railing, and Dolly moved with them and took her seat on a wooden bench at the right. Sandy was not yet in the courtroom, and all these people, at first glance, were strangers to Dolly. She found herself sitting next to a tall white-haired man in a sort of cowboy costume, with a sombrero on his knees. Across the room, to her surprise, she recognized the milkman, in a pink shirt and Windsor tie.

The courtroom door swung open, and Clover sauntered in, accompanied by a small gray-haired man with a briefcase. She had little bright blue eyes, like Christmas tree bulbs, lit up. Her brown hair was pulled up in a horse’s tail, with a big plaid ribbon tied around it. She had on a great deal of rouge, and her lipstick had come off on her front teeth. She wore an old, shapeless winter coat, red knee socks, moccasins, and a plaid skirt and vest. The skirt was much too big for her, and to Dolly’s eyes, she looked pathetically unreal, like a child painted up and dressed in adult clothes to beg on the street at Thanksgiving. The two children had disappeared. She was walking straight toward Dolly, who lowered her eyes and laced her fingers on her lap. “Aren’t you in the wrong pew?” Clover said, in a deep husky voice.

Dolly started and looked about her in perplexity. “You’re his witness, aren’t you?” said Clover. “These are my witnesses.” Dolly reddened and jumped up, dropping her pocketbook. The uniformed man, the sheriff, was hurrying toward her. Somebody handed her her pocketbook. The whole courtroom stared while Dolly changed places. She stumbled into a seat at the end of the front row, by the witness stand, while across the room Clover took the seat she had vacated. The two “teams” of witnesses, facing each other, made Dolly think of a spelling bee or a give-away program on television. She could not imagine where they had come from, where the lawyers had found them; they were like professional mourners, too, or like floaters rounded up to vote in an election. She could not remember seeing any of them, except the milkman, before. But gradually she began to recognize faces. At the end of the back row, on her side, was Sandy’s fourth wife, Margery, the girl who worked in the grille. Across the room, on Clover’s side, was the oysterman. Next to him was one of the New Leeds Craftsmen; Dolly had not known him, with his hair combed and a shave. All of them were transformed for the occasion; that was what had confused her. In their ordinary gear, she had been seeing them every day at the post office or the First National check-out. But now they wore “city clothes” or, to be exact, parts of them. One man had on striped trousers over bare feet and sandals; another had a necktie and pearl stickpin with a pea jacket. Ancient waistcoats, long earrings, tarnished metal blouses, old fur pieces, a gold watch chain with a Phi Beta Kappa key, velvets, nodding plumes, a motoring veil, proclaimed the community’s notion of a solid respectable front. The man next to Dolly wore a white suit, like Mark Twain. But his feet, she could not help noticing, were in leather bedroom slippers. It was the same all along the row: an uneven satin hemline ended in bare legs and tennis shoes; a black tailleur, in a set of espadrilles. A kind of defiance, evidently, had set in with the feet, which refused to render unto Caesar.

A strange smell rose from the witnesses—a combination of stale alcohol and mothballs. Dolly could still taste last night’s liquor on her own breath, and she wondered whether these perfumes could be wafted up to the judge. Just below her, near the sheriff’s desk, sat a small woman in a plain suit, with a notebook and briefcase. The man next to Dolly leaned over. “S.P.C.C.,” he whispered, cupping his mouth with one hand while his elbow nudged Dolly in the ribs. “S.P.C.C.,” he repeated, opening his red-rimmed eyes very wide.

Dolly stared miserably at the network of empurpled veins in his cheeks. To her horror, she had begun to feel ashamed of these New Leedsians and to look upon them with the eyes of an outsider—the caseworker, the judge. Nearly all of them seemed the worse for drink, swollen and dropsical, or lean and red, with popping eyes and stiff veins and shaking hands. Several of the men had bits of dried blood on their faces, where they had cut themselves, apparently, while shaving. One young man—he could not have been more than thirty—had stone-gray hair and a face as white as leprosy; his arm was in a sling. And yet they were all in good spirits. It was only she who was depressed and self-conscious. Dolly could hear them discussing the judge. “He always favors the woman,” said a young man in a corduroy coat and turtle-necked sweater. “I had him when Carol divorced me.” “You’re wrong, darling,” said an old woman in slacks. “I had him and he cut off the maintenance.”

A woman with dyed red hair and a face like a monkey suddenly addressed Dolly. “Did you hear about my case?” Dolly shook her head; she had never met this person, who seemed to be drenched in the perfume called
Femme.
“I’ve seen you in the liquor store,” the woman went on. “I’m a friend of Paul’s. Do you know what happened to me last year? They brought me into court for lowering the birth rate.” Dolly looked perplexed. “I ran into a car carrying three pregnant women. They all had miscarriages and sued me.” The woman’s voice was loud and laughing. The caseworker looked up and frowned. Dolly reddened. “I’m a sort of jinx,” her new friend continued. “Last year, a man dropped dead on my sofa. I thought he had passed out.”

Sandy slipped into the seat next to Dolly. He had been talking with the children. “She has them coached,” he said angrily. “Her lawyer’s got it rigged up for them to talk to the judge in chambers.” Dolly indicated the sheriff. “I don’t give a damn if he hears,” Sandy muttered, lowering his voice. “She has no right to bring the kids into a thing like this. It’s criminal, having their feelings pawed over. ‘Do you love Mother best or Daddy? Come on, tell the Judge.’ Imagine what that will do to them twenty years from now.” He sat back with an air of dark satisfaction, then jumped up, in response to a signal from Barney, who had been talking with Clover’s lawyer by the window. Dolly rubbed her forehead. He was right, she thought remorsefully; such a decision was horrible for a child.

“They want to make a stipulation,” volunteered the man in the white suit, nudging Dolly again, to direct her attention to Sandy, who seemed to be arguing with his lawyer. “What’s that?” said Dolly, uneasily; she could see that Sandy was getting worked up, by his gestures. “The lawyers get together,” said the young man behind her, eagerly, “and try to agree to shorten the testimony. Clover doesn’t defend, and they fix it up with the judge to award divided custody. They always try to pull that.” The man in the white suit nodded. “But wouldn’t that be the best thing?” timidly suggested Dolly. “After they’ve got us all down here … ?” said the man in the pea jacket, looking at his watch. “If they don’t start soon, damn it, I’m going to step out for a drink.” “Oh, please don’t,” cried Dolly. “The town’s dry, Jack,” said the man in the white suit. “Local option.” The man in the pea jacket settled back on the bench. “Oh, it’s all a farce,” declared the man in the white suit. “We’re all wasting our time. We come down here to be nice, to do a favor. Who knows the rights and wrongs of these things?
I
don’t. I’m just a character witness. You too?” Dolly nodded. “I don’t judge between ’em,” said the man, dropping his voice, as Sandy started back to his place. “In my opinion, the best thing would be to give the children to the state. Let the town bring ’em up. The town spawned ’em, you might say.”

“Barney’s sore,” reported Sandy, sitting down. “He wanted me to compromise.” “And you wouldn’t?” said Dolly. Sandy shook his head. All at once, the courtroom grew quiet. The judge sat up, under the American flag; a woman (the assistant registrar, said Dolly’s neighbor) took her place at the other end of the judicial bench, under the state flag. Spectators tiptoed into the rear benches. The first witness was being sworn: Mrs. Mary Viera, a cleaning woman who worked by the day. “Our star witness,” said Sandy. She was a small, black-eyed person in a dark suit and white blouse—the only respectable-looking person, thought Dolly, in the whole array of witnesses. Her English was surprisingly broken, and she had a voice queerly pitched, like a parrot’s. She worked, it seemed, occasionally for Clover, and she testified to the state of the house, on the days when she came to clean. It was very dirty, she agreed, under Barney’s questioning. Cat pee (“Excuse me, Mister,”) in the corners; children’s beds dirty; food stuck on the table; food on the walls; icebox dirty, food with beards inside; grease burned on pans; dog food all over, on floors, no vacuum cleaner; old smelly mop; no light bulb in toilet.