Blues in the Night (22 page)

thirty-six

There’s a Yiddish proverb that says there’s no such thing as a bad mother or a good death. Now I wasn’t sure it was true. I told myself it was ridiculous to feel betrayed by a woman who had, after all, not asked me to write about her or spend an entire week trying to figure out whether she’d killed herself or had been murdered.

And this wasn’t about my feelings. This was about a dead child. I had driven home on autopilot and was sitting in my parked car, overwhelmed with sadness for poor little Max Saunders, shaken to death not by a mother too ill to know what she was doing, but by someone who had planned that death before he’d taken his first breath. He’d have been dead either way, but it made a huge difference.

I’ve seen my sisters and sister-in-law pregnant. I’ve placed my hand on a swollen belly, felt the fetus’s quickening, the later months’ rumbling movements. A knee, an elbow, an arm.

A miracle. And that’s before the baby was born.

What had Lenore felt when the baby had moved inside her? What had she felt the first time she’d held him, seen his first gassy smile? Was there an instant in which she’d reconsidered? At what point had she decided to do it? How had she chosen the day?

I couldn’t bear thinking about Lenore another minute. I stepped out of the car into the dark night, locked it, and was on the porch, my house key in my hand, when I heard footsteps behind me.

I whirled around, my heart in my throat, keys poised to strike. It was Zack.

“You scared me half to death!” I said, breathing hard and pressing my hand against my chest.

“I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to you, Molly.”

“There are phones.”

“In person. I came straight from shul. I don’t like the way last night ended.”

I didn’t like it either. I was about to say, “Is that why you called Lisa?” but I wasn’t in the mood for verbal jousting. “I drove to your office last night with cheesecake from Maison Gourmet, to apologize for being late and ruining the evening. I heard you on the phone, making a date.” God, this was so high school.

“If you’d stayed, I would have told you the woman I was arranging to meet is my married cousin.”

I was glad it was dark. “I didn’t know you had a cousin.”

“I’m thirty years old, Molly. I stopped playing games a long time ago.”

I sighed. “I’m sorry. I obviously jumped to conclusions. I seem to be doing that.”

“You still don’t trust me, do you?”

“I said I’m sorry.”

“And the next time?”

He was right, of course. “I’ve had a rough day, Zack. I’m exhausted. Can we talk about this another time?”

“I’d really like to talk now, Molly.”

The night was still warm, so we sat on the glider on the porch, the jasmine Isaac had let me plant in the earthenware pot scenting the air. I thought Zack would start, but he was waiting for me.

“It’s not just you,” I told him, my eyes on the sliver of moon, because even now talking about this was hard. “Ron cheated on me. That’s why we divorced. It’s not something I talk about, and I’m only telling you so you’ll understand.”

“That must have been terribly painful,” he said quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s definitely not something I want to go through again.”

“I’m not Ron, Molly.”

“I know that.”

“I’m not the guy who dumped you twelve years ago. But I can’t keep trying to prove myself to you.”

“I know that, too.” I pushed my toe against the brick floor and set the glider in motion.

“I thought we really had something going when I was here Sunday.”

“We did,” I agreed.

“Then why would you think I’d throw it away?”

“I don’t know. I was late. You were upset.”

“Couples argue,” he said. “They get irritated with each other. That doesn’t mean they’re over.”

“History,” I said. “I’m not interested in getting hurt again.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. “I can’t promise that you won’t be hurt, Molly, just like you can’t promise that I won’t be.”

“I know.”

“I’m a rabbi of a shul. I’ll be meeting with women who are seventy-five and women in their twenties, and sometimes I won’t be able to tell you who I’m meeting, or why. I need to know that you trust me.”

“It’s like a learned response,” I told him. “It’s hard to unlearn. But I’m willing to try.”

From the way he was looking at me, I knew that if he weren’t a rabbi, he would have leaned over right then and kissed me, and I would have let him. It’s just as well. Sometimes a kiss will let you believe that it’s a promise sealed, instead of hope. Sometimes it can confuse or, like Ron’s kisses, lie.

We rocked on the glider for a few minutes, the silence easier between us.

“You mentioned that you had a rough night,” Zack said.

Bubbie G says a heavy heart talks a lot. I don’t know how long I talked, but I told him every detail about Lenore and her mother that I’d learned during the past few days, told him how devastated I was. He listened without interrupting, and I felt a little better after unburdening myself, though not at peace.

“I’d like nothing better than to find out I’m wrong,” I said. “And it’s not as though I have hard evidence.”

“But you believe she killed her child intentionally.”

“I don’t want to. I can’t understand how someone could intentionally kill
any
child, Zack, especially her own. But then, I can’t understand a person who has no conscience, who’ll do anything to get what he wants.”

“The Torah talks about people like that,” Zack said. “Pharaoh, for one. He ordered his people to drown all male babies born to Israelite women. And there’s the woman who came to King Solomon with another woman. Her baby had died, and she’d switched it with the woman’s live child, but claimed that the other woman had done the switching. Solomon announces he’s going to cut the baby in half, and the real mother cries, ‘Let the other woman keep the baby,’ because, of course, she can’t bear to have him harmed. So the true mother is revealed.”

I nodded. Everybody knew the story. I’d studied it several times in high school.

“The commentaries discuss the syntax each woman uses,” Zack continued. “One woman says, ‘Her son is dead, mine is alive.’ The other says, ‘My son is alive, hers is dead.’ The order reveals that the first woman was lying, that what was most important to her wasn’t the fact that her son was alive, but that the
other
woman’s baby was dead.”

“But the
other
woman focused on the fact that
her
baby was alive. I get it.” I wondered whether something in Lenore’s testimony would reveal what she’d been thinking.

“I was always puzzled by the woman who lied,” Zack said. “Why didn’t she do what the real mother did—pretend to care by telling Solomon she was willing to give up her baby? The commentaries ask the same question.”

“And?”

“According to some, the two women were mother-in-law and daughter-in-law living in one house, both newly widowed, and it was the daughter-in-law’s baby that had died. Some say she switched babies because she wanted the inheritance that would come to her through the live child. Others say because her husband died childless, she was obligated to perpetuate his name through her dead husband’s brother—the mother-in-law’s newborn son. And she would have to wait years until the brother reached his majority and could release her, through a ritual, so that she would be free to marry.”

“So she was stuck,” I said.

“Right.”

I frowned. “But that isn’t fair.”

“Only according to our understanding, which is limited. We can’t presume to understand God’s laws, Molly, or understand His plan. The point is, this woman didn’t want the baby because she
loved
it. She wasn’t grief-stricken about her own child’s death. She switched her dead child with her mother-in-law’s
live
baby because he would set her free. And that’s why she didn’t care if Solomon killed the child. She had no
interest
in suckling and raising a child that wasn’t hers. The child was an impediment to her happiness. He wasn’t a human being. He was a thing.”

“Just like little Max Saunders,” I said. “But there’s a big difference. That baby lived, Zack. Max died. An innocent two-month-old died. I don’t understand that either.” Or Aggie Lasher, I thought, but didn’t say.

“I met with a couple once who had just lost a newborn,” Zack said after a moment. “They were heartbroken. I was, too. I didn’t know what to tell them. So I phoned Rabbi Frank in Israel. He told me a beautiful story about a special heavenly hall for the souls of infants, souls so pure they need only the shortest amount of time on earth to complete their missions. A few minutes, a few hours, a few days, a few months. And then they go home.”

“And that helped them?”

“It didn’t take away the pain, or the numbing loss. Nothing will do that. But I do think it helped a little. I think it was a comfort.”

We sat a while longer, until the air turned chilly and my yawns came one after another although it was only after ten.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Zack said. “By the way, did you get the invitation?”

Honesty, I decided. “I tossed it.”

He smiled. “I’ll have them send you another one.”

“That’s okay. I know where and when. I haven’t decided yet if I’m coming.”

“No pressure. So how was the cheesecake?”

“Divine, both slices. Lucky for me, sulking doesn’t affect my appetite.”

He waited until I was inside, my door locked and bolted, and I watched through the living room window as he walked down the block to his car.

I’d eaten hours ago, and the mention of cheesecake had made me hungry. I did serious damage to a carton of Häagen-Dazs, and, my exhaustion replaced by a second wind that was nine-tenths curiosity, I went to my office, where I’d placed the trial transcripts.

The phone rang. I looked at the Caller ID and picked up the receiver.

“I asked Robbie about the nightgown,” Jillian said. “He said he’d gone to the kitchen to get her coffee, to calm her down. When he came back into the living room, she was wearing my nightgown. He didn’t tell me because he didn’t want to upset me. I just wanted you to know.”

I pictured Lenore opening Jillian’s drawers, taking the nightgown and slipping it on, staking her claim.

“They were together one time.
One time!
” She spat the words. “He felt so ashamed, so
stupid
. She’d come crying to him one night when she knew I wasn’t home, begging for help. She was lonely, she was depressed, she was afraid she might hurt herself. The usual bullshit. And he fell for it.” There was contempt mixed in with the anger. “He tried comforting her, and next thing he knew, they were in bed. He thinks she drugged him with one of her pills.”

A day ago I would have thought Robbie was fabricating. Now I wasn’t sure. “I suppose Robbie wanted to prepare you, now that the police are investigating Lenore’s suicide and all this will come out.”

“He told me the day after it happened. I didn’t tell you because he’d be upset, but I don’t want you to think he was hiding anything from me. We tell each other
everything
. You can’t build a marriage on deceit.” She spoke doggedly, almost by rote, like a prisoner reciting her name and serial number.

“Robbie made a mistake, Molly. Of course, I was hurt. But Lenore tricked him, and we both knew that. He told her he wasn’t about to let her trap him again. That’s why she killed herself.”

I’d wondered why she’d called to tell me.

No secrets, no motive.

thirty-seven

I skimmed through the first volume of the transcripts, which included the voir dire and opening statements from Bergen and then Chapman. Nothing I hadn’t already known.

The second volume and the first half of the third presented the prosecution’s witnesses.

One of the paramedics who responded to Saunders’s 10:22
P
.
M
. 911 call was first. He testified that the baby was dead when he arrived. Reading the testimony, I could imagine the horror the jurors had felt listening to the grim details. Donna Bergen had begun her case well.

Robbie was next. His description of finding the baby dead in Lenore’s arms was almost verbatim what he’d told me, but the details were still chilling—more so now that I suspected Lenore may have acted not out of delusion but malice. He testified that she’d told him several days before that the baby’s cry hadn’t sounded normal, that he’d reassured her.

MS. BERGEN: That first time did your wife tell you she thought there was a demon inside your son?

A: No, she didn’t. I think she was afraid to tell me.

MR. CHAPMAN: Move to strike, Your Honor. The witness can’t know what the defendant was thinking.

THE COURT: The jury will disregard the last statement. Proceed, Ms. Bergen.

FROM MS. BERGEN: Did it occur to you, when you discovered your baby dead and your wife told you what she’d done, that she was lying?

A: No.

Q: That she was afraid to tell you she’d lost her temper and shaken the baby too hard?

A: Lenore wouldn’t do anything to harm the baby. I believed her.

Q: The thought didn’t cross your mind?

FROM MR. CHAPMAN: Asked and answered, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Move on, Ms. Bergen.

FROM MS. BERGEN: How was your wife that morning, Mr. Saunders?

A: She was tired, as usual. She hadn’t been sleeping well since the baby was born. But in the last few days she’d seemed different. Not like herself.

Q: Can you explain what you mean?

A: It’s nothing I can put my finger on. She just wasn’t Lenore.

Q: You stated that the housekeeper was out sick that day. Did your wife ask you to stay home and help her with the baby?

A: No.

Q:She didn’t seem like herself, but you weren’t worried about leaving her alone with the baby?

A: No. I realize now that I should have been.

MS. BERGEN: Move to strike, Your Honor. Not responsive.

THE COURT: You opened the door, Ms. Bergen. Continue.

FROM MS. BERGEN: You were in your Santa Barbara office that day. How far is that from your home?

A: About ten minutes.

Q:Did your wife phone to tell you she needed help with the baby?

A: No.

Q: Did you phone her during the day?

A: Yes, around three in the afternoon, to see how she was doing. I had to drive to L.A. and wanted to make sure she was okay.

Q: What did she tell you?

A: That she was tired but okay. She sounded tense.

Q: More tense than usual?

A: It’s hard to say. She was constantly anxious.

Q:Well, if you were worried, you would have gone home, especially since she was all alone with the baby. Isn’t that correct?

A: I guess so, yes.

Q: So there was nothing to indicate that she was about to have a psychotic episode?

MR. CHAPMAN: Objection. Mr. Saunders isn’t qualified to make that kind of assessment.

THE COURT: Sustained.

FROM MS. BERGEN: Did you phone her later that day?

A: Yes, at a little after six. I wanted to make sure she was okay.

Q: Was she?

A: She didn’t answer the phone. I thought she was resting.

Q: Did your wife phone you?

A: No, she did not.

A few pages later in the transcript . . .

MS. BERGEN: Do you feel responsible for your son’s death, Mr. Saunders?

A: Yes. I should have been home more. I should have seen the signs and made sure Lenore got help.

Q: You don’t think she should be punished for killing your son?

A: She needs help, not prison.

Q: Is that why you’re lying here today, Mr. Saunders? Because you feel guilty?

A: Lenore would never have wanted to hurt our son. I believe my wife.

In his cross-examination, Chapman focused on the fact that Lenore had seemed different during the past few days, and he had only a few questions for Robbie: Did he believe that Lenore had heard frightening voices from the baby? Did he believe that was why she’d shaken the baby?

“I believe my wife,” Robbie had said. “She would never have done anything to hurt Max.”

One of the two uniformed police who initially talked to Lenore took the stand, followed by Detective James Jordan, who testified that, following her husband’s advice, Lenore had refused to answer any questions without an attorney present. She’d been distant, detached, calm. She showed no remorse. Donna Bergen had made that sound damning, but Chapman had turned it around.

MR. CHAPMAN: Detective, in your work, have you questioned individuals who have been in shock?

A: Yes, I have.

Q: Would it be fair to say, from your experience, that people in shock can appear to be detached and distant?

A: I guess so.

Q: So is it possible that Lenore Saunders was in shock?

A: It’s possible.

Q: Detective, were you familiar with postpartum psychosis when you arrived at the Saunderses’ home?

A: No, I wasn’t.

Q: So at that time, were you aware that a mother experiencing a psychotic episode can be convinced that her baby is the devil?

A: At the time, no, I wasn’t.

Q: Or that the mother might believe the only way to save her child is to rid the child of this evil?

A: At the time, no.

Q: Detective, if you believed you had saved your child from demonic forces, would you be calm?

A: I guess I might.

Was it the calm of a woman in a postpsychotic state, I wondered, or of a psychopath who feels no remorse for the life she’s taken?

Lenore’s obstetrician testified that the birth had been normal, and that Lenore had never complained about depression, prenatal or postnatal, although he admitted under cross-examination that he had no way of knowing whether patients were depressed unless they told him so, and because she’d moved to Santa Barbara in her ninth month, he’d seen Lenore a total of four times, including the day of delivery and a postnatal exam six weeks later.

“Not much time to develop a relationship,” Chapman had noted.

The baby’s pediatrician testified that Lenore hadn’t mentioned hearing voices, though she had seemed anxious about the baby’s well-being, asking if he appeared normal, and she’d worried because he was crying incessantly throughout the day and even more so in the evenings, a condition the doctor attributed to the colic typical of many newborns.

MS. BERGEN: Mrs. Saunders brought the baby in twelve times in a period of two months. Is that normal?

A: It’s somewhat excessive. She was anxious about his weight, and then about the crying. She was nursing, and didn’t know whether he was getting enough milk, or whether her milk was agreeing with him. She needed reassurance, but that’s typical of new mothers.

Q: But still, Dr. List. Twelve visits in two months?

A: I’ve had mothers who bring their newborns in every other day. It doesn’t mean they’re depressed, or that something’s wrong with the mother or the baby.

On his cross, Chapman elicited what he had before: Just because Lenore hadn’t said she was depressed, didn’t mean she wasn’t.

MR. CHAPMAN: In fact, Dr. List, didn’t Mrs. Saunders tell you that she felt overwhelmed, that she wasn’t sleeping? That she found herself crying for no reason?

A: She mentioned the crying a few days after giving birth. I attributed it to the baby blues. Since she didn’t mention it again, I thought she was doing better. As for feeling overwhelmed and being unable to sleep, that’s typical of new mothers.

Q: Aren’t those some of the symptoms of postpartum depression, Doctor?

A: They could be. I’ve found that many new mothers feel like that. Once the baby sleeps through the night, things work themselves out.

Q: Not always, Doctor. Did Lenore Saunders ever give you the impression that she was frustrated by the crying or angry with her child?

A: No, she didn’t.

Q: Did you think she was a loving, devoted mother?

A: Yes, I did.

I was reading words on paper—there was no nuance, no body language—but I have to say Chapman had succeeded in making Lenore sound depressed. Maybe she really
had
been. I had to keep an open mind.

Or had she been setting the groundwork for her defense? If so, she’d been clever. Reporting symptoms that could be indications of depression, but not saying she
was
depressed, because if she’d done so, then someone—the obstetrician, the pediatrician—would have recommended therapy and medication, and of course, she hadn’t wanted that. Not if she’d planned to kill her baby and claim she’d been suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time. Which would explain why she hadn’t asked Robbie to come home, even though she’d been tense and alone, the housekeeper coincidentally absent that fateful day.

The coroner was the state’s last witness. He testified that Max Saunders had been dead several hours by the time the paramedics arrived. The cause of death was a broken neck resulting from vigorous shaking and a “coup-contrecoup injury” to the brain. A baby is fragile, and the coroner described Max Saunders’s other injuries, internal and external. I wish I hadn’t read them.

“Your witness,” Donna Bergen said when she finished her questioning.

Chapman didn’t cross-examine, and I understood why. No one was denying that Lenore had shaken little Max to his death, and I assumed the defense attorney had no desire to reinforce the particulars on the jury.